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TEACHING BY PROJECTS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

ITEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lm>. 

TORONTO 



TEACHING bi PROJECTS 

A BASIS 
FOR PURPOSEFUL STUDY 



BY 

CHARLES A. McMURRY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1920 

All tights naerved 



^•5)\o&1 



a,-^ 



Copyright, igao. 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1920. 



NortoflolJ ^rtss 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A561538 



STATEMENT OF NEEDS 

We need to organize knowledge into complete wholes or 
projects, looking toward well-conceived, purposive ends. 

We need to discriminate in teaching between bare facts 
and constructive projects, around which facts are gathered 
and centered. 

We need to economize time and avoid waste by organiz- 
ing instruction. 

We need to avoid what is vague and merely abstract. 

We need a better basis, in large instructional units, 
for planning lessons and for executing class-teaching. 

We need to consider knowledge not as formal and static 
but as progressive and dynamic, i.e., as contributing to 
the growth of ideas. 

We need to start out in every new subject with full, keen, 
relishable knowledge and, on this basis, to provide for 
steady growth and organization into large units. 

We need to practice the use of knowledge at every turn, 
first by directing attention to what is serviceable and, 
secondly, by using it in the realization of projects. 

We need to put a far richer meaning into common, famil- 
iar topics which are types for later growth and expansion. 

We need to simpKfy, organize, and enrich every impor- 
tant topic or project until it reaches the stage of a complete 
achievement. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VAGZ 

I. Projects in the School 1-17 

II. Examples of Complete Projects . . . 18-43 

III. The Significance of Projects\as Large Units 

OF Study 44-59 

IV. The Enlarged Object Lesson or Project and 

Its Relation to the Learning Process . 60-83 
V. Three Important Principles Put to Work 

UNDER Right Conditions .... 84-97 
VI. A Growing Tendency to Adopt Large Projects 

AS Study Units 98-120 

Vll. Simplifying Studies on the Basis of Large 

"Projects 121-134 

VIII. The Enrichment of Instruction by the Inten- 
sive Treatment of Large Units . . .135-151 

IX. Large Lesson Planning Based on Projects . 152-167 
X. Large Teaching Units or Projects a Broad 

Basis for Instruction 168-188 

XI. The Salt River Project and Irrigation . 189-215 

XII. Method Illustrated by THE Salt River Project 216-236 

XIII. Classroom Method Based on Projects . . 237-254 



vu 



TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

CHAPTER I 
PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL 

Projects are of two kinds : 

First, the child's project undertaken at his own behest 
when he is pressed by a felt desire or need, e.g. xwo classes 
the bird house, the rabbit trap, a homemade o^P'oiects 
telephone. 

Secondly, the projects of others which the child appro- 
priates, into which he is easily drawn, and to which he gives 
his undivided attention, as the invention of the cotton gin, 
the planning of a canal lock, or improving the harbor of 
San Francisco; or he is absorbed in Crusoe's projects of 
cave-making, boat-building, and taming of animals. 

There is a wide range to the first kind of self -chosen proj- 
ects that a child falls upon, from doll dresses, sleds, tree- 
houses, or camping trips, to the dramatizing of a tale and even 
the writing of a story or poem. There is a still wider scope 
and bigness to the projects of the second class that he 
appropriates from without, and both sorts happily open the 
way into important school studies. Even a child's games 
show how easily he passes beyond his own small projects 
to those of his elders, as in hunting, gardening, and house 
building. He participates freely in the projects of men 
exploring new regions, as Boone and Fremont; or Fulton 
building and exhibiting the first steamboat; or Captain 



2 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Eads constructing the jetties to open a deep passage at 
the mouth of the Mississippi. These projects which men 
and women, active in the world, are pushing to completion, 
are appropriate and engaging subjects for young people 
who are just opening their eyes to the big things in life, 
as, Livingstone opening up Central Africa, the Red Cross 
busy in rehef work, Cornell founding a university for 
the people, New York City constructing its huge aqueduct 
from the Catskills for supplying its vast population 
with water. Industrial and scientific projects in mining, 
in agriculture, and in sanitation are the choice enterprises 
for children. Even big government projects in irrigation 
and canal construction engage the mind in genuine thought 
problems. 

In the impulse to adjust themselves to the larger world, 
children find themselves involved in these important 
projects whether developed in the past or now opening up 
in life about them. 

Educationally considered, we believe a child is at his 
best when planning and executing his own projects, or at 
Value of least those which engage his full powers. Adult 
projects j^Q^ ^^^ women also in active undertakings are 
at their best when working out effectively important busi- 
ness and other projects. Even society, in its larger organi- 
zations, is at its best when engaged energetically in develop- 
ing and executing social projects. In all these cases the 
project has the merit of a self-directed organization of 
mental and physical resources to achieve a well-considered 
result. The larger projects of adult life and of social and 
industrial progress have the additional merit that they tax 
the serious thought powers of children. They are real 
problems resting upon a practical basis of life experience. 



PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL 3 

They also stimulate and require a sustained effort in 
thinking. 

Whether the child is engaged in his self -chosen project 
or makes his own some bold and difficult undertaking of 
another, the motive and energy of thought are much the 
same. The project itself is a natural summons to ambition 
and effort, an impulsive forward movement in purposeful 
thinking, and yet objective, and oftentimes even dramatic 
and spectacular. These project-problems, expressing the 
strain of thought and effort to master the forces of environ- 
ment, lead more directly into life conditions as they are 
than any other studies. 

There is a close and necessary connection between the 
self-chosen projects of the child's small world and the 
large projects of the life beyond. The smaller problems 
are a prelude to the major ones soon to follow, to which 
they are so closely akin in motive and in spirit. Children 
should be induced to work out as many of these self -chosen 
projects as may be feasible in order that they may take on 
the problem-solving attitude with respect to the larger, 
more complex problems whose solution may be thought out. 

It is a truism of our educational creed that sensory 
impressions based on object lessons and motor response form 
the primary basis of thought in dealing with the later 
materials of knowledge. The project conceived and exe- 
cuted by the child on the ground of his own experience is a 
still better basis for our educational efforts because it 
sets up in children self-determination and purposeful 
activity in a complete, natural, and well-rounded unit of 
effort. This kind and quality of constructive thought can 
be carried forward into later studies and into life as a funda- 
mental method of exploring, organizing, and using knowledge. 



4 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

The object of a good course of study is to allow the chil- 
dren to grow into and identify themselves with the enter- 
prising projects which men, past and present, have found 
most essential to their welfare and progress. The child's 
own little projects are very essential beginnings in this 
fundamental process of appropriating and using knowledge 
and experience directed by himself toward useful ends. 
The best devices of instruction may be turned into this 
channel where children are led to the self -appropriation of 
those larger projects in which wiser heads, active in the 
world, set their chief store. 

While the larger projects of the world just outside of the 
school have a powerful attraction for children, it is of equal 
Growth importance to repeat and emphasize the approach 
fromindi- to these projccts out of the child's experience so 
social that the projects of his own making grow into the 

projects larger schemes of life. Contact with life at both 
ends is essential, first in a rich child environment, and 
secondly in a richer, better-organized social environment 
beyond the school walls. The world's experience and 
wisdom are gathered up and organized into these successful 
projects. They express the growing stages, the actual 
evolution of the main life processes in a practical world. 

In pljang his trade among school children the teacher 
must be a full master of both kinds of experience, the in- 
dividual and the social, constantly playing back and forth 
between the two, establishing thus that steady continuity 
of growth into a larger experience which makes education 
all of one piece. 

On this basis it is necessary for the teacher to study the 
big world and its dominating projects quite as closely as 
the child, his tendencies, and activities. This cannot be 



PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL 5 

called an easy program for the teacher. But it is at least 
an opportunity to sound the depths of our real problem of 
education and to turn our effort into the main current of 
progress in the teaching art. 

The term project belongs in one sense to the language of 
business, — or of plans and schemes in active life. It is an 
echo |rom a noisy world, an intrusion upon the ^^.^^^^^ ^^ 
quiet of the school, like a sharp train whistle or a fleet real 
noisy street wagon. But our drowsy school 
work may need this influx of noise and disturbance from 
without. At any rate the school is being brought into sharp 
contact with real life. In the school program itself, the 
children are learning to understand and adjust themselves 
to life surroundings and to take in the full meaning of the 
schemes and forces that are shaping society outside of the 
school. 

In taking over these life projects and adopting them into 
a plan of instruction as units of thought and effort, we find 
in them two striking qualities that fit the needs of teaching. 
First, they are objective and practical, not theoretical and 
vague. Big projects like the power plant at Muscle Shoals, 
the Panama' Canal, or the jetty improvements at the mouth 
of the Mississippi stand out as commanding objects of 
attention. They are worth an examination. Secondly, such 
a real undertaking establishes a center of purposeful effort 
which develops rapidly into a fruitful, progressive subject 
of study. Aroimd this definite, tangible center the ma- 
terials of knowledge begin to collect and organize and 
thought has plenty of stuff to work upon. 

The term project as we are using it has a wide scope and 
is applicable to a variety of undertakings in several im- 
portant studies. It may be worth while to particularize 



6 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

in some detail the wide range of capital projects which the 
school may now find profitable as standard units of mental 
effort. 

First : There are simple, objective projects of the hand-work 
type. We are familiar with them in the larger and smaller 
Shop and Constructions of the shops, for example, in 
home proj- textile fabrics, in wood work, in book binding and 
printing, in pottery, and in nmny related home 
undertakings such as repairs, reconstructions, and sanitary 
appliances. To the same group belong plans for school 
and home gardening, agriculture and fruit growing;, chicken 
raising, dairying, and other specialties. The household 
arts supply another group of definite projects in laundering, 
sewing^ cooking, and millinery, in house decollation and 
f urnishiag. In some schools there is a tendency to extend 
school credits to these home enterprises and accomplish- 
ments. These shop-and-farm and household projects have 
both a marked educational value, and a clear, practical 
utility. They require a distinct forethought in planning 
and designing, resourcefulness in meeting new and, untried 
situations, persistent purpose and industry in executing 
plans, and, finally, a proper use of the results or products. 
Not many school exercises of the old stripe combine in one 
strong series of efforts all these merits and advantages. 

Secondly : The study of geography supplies a profusion of 
big, tangible projects of conspicuous importance in human 
Industrial affairs, as projects in bridge construction, in rail- 
mCTdfO^' road engineering and mountain tunneling, in 
projects expensive mining operations, in the survey and 
building of canals, in dealing with extensive forest reserves, 
in planning city waterworks and reservoirs, in irrigation 
schemes on a large scale, in installing great water powers 



PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL 7 

at dams and falls in rivers, in laying ocean cables, in build- 
ing subways, in improving harbors, in regulating rivers 
bylevees and jetties, m the drainage of swan;p areas, in great 
corporations for the conduct of business on a vast scale, 
as steamship companies and railroad systems. We are 
now discovering that these large municipal, governmental, 
and industrial projects are in themselves complete and 
well-organized units of study, the best sort of standard 
topics for schoolroom instruction. The school can well 
turn its attention to these enterprises because they are so 
largely shaping life about us ; they are dominant in their 
influence upon the occupations, the homes and surroundings 
of thousands and millions of our people. They are the 
things that children desire to know and understand. Ex- 
periments in the full school-treatment of these topics have 
also demonstrated that they have a peculiar suitability 
to the thinking power and interest of children. 

In another and quite different way nature herself works 
out on a large scale projects which we study in geography, 
as the sculpturing of a river valley, the work of a mountain 
glacier, the course and influence of an ocean current, the 
regular circulation of winds and moisture upon the earth, 
the course and movements of a cyclonic storm. These 
may be called natural units of study, displaying nature's 
big patterns or designs, by which she works out her projects 
in making the earth a fit dwelling place for man. 

Thirdly : A third group of projects has a more distinctly 
scientific origin. Inventions and discoveries based upon 
scientific principles are embodied in steam r. • * • 

\ ^ Projects m 

engines, wireless stations, power plants, great applied 
telescopes, electric motors, mining and smelting 
processes, lightning rods, hydrostatic presses, steam dredges, 



8 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

and water filters. Scientific processes also are applied to 
the ventilation of buildings, to hospital and surgery prac- 
tice, to the propagation of plants, the extraction and 
preservation of foods, to the fertilizing of soils, to the bac- 
terial treatment of diseases, to quarantine and sanitation. 
AppHed science is full of big, comprehensive projects for 
turning scientific knowledge into use in commerce, in war, 
in aviation, in agriculture, in animal husbandry, in naviga- 
tion, in the extraction and use of metals, in electrical ap- 
pliances, and in medicine. 

It is in these very projects, objective and directly practical 
in their bearings, that children are best able to see the mean- 
ing and value of modern science in its influence upon life. 
What children in elementary schools need is not abstract 
scientific principles, not the systematic study of any or all 
the sciences (an impossible thing), but simple, objective, 
convincing demonstrations of the main ideas and uses of 
science in the home and neighborhood and in the larger 
world beyond. What could be better for children than to 
allow them to see these tangible projects developing and 
working out their proper, practical influence upon the con- 
ditions of life that surround them ? These are preeminently 
needful and instructive topics that should be given the 
right of way in the elementary curriculum. 

Fourthly : Many of the stories and undertakings described 
in biography and history are large personal or national 
. projects in the full meaning of the term. For 
biography example, Columbus' first voyage, the Panama 
istory Q^j^oi^ Alexander's first campaign into Asia, St. 
Paul's missionary journeys. Grant's movement against 
Vicksburg, the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri 
and across the mountains, the voyage of the Mayflower, 



PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL g 

Livingstone's explorations in Africa. In a large interpreta- 
tion, history consists of an account of men's important 
projects in the building of cities, in the founding of states, 
in legislative programs, in reform movements, in founding 
institutions and societies, in warlike conquest, in territorial 
expansions, in the development of traJQ&c routes and com- 
mercial policies. Especially in the story of leading his- 
torical characters do we find the personal impulse strong to 
execute some scheme or propagandist idea, some notion 
of progress, as illustrated in Hamilton's plan for funding 
the national debt, Field's project for la)dng the first Atlantic 
cable, Stanley's search for Livingstone, Howard's scheme of 
prison reform, Franklin's proposed Albany plan for the 
union of the colonies, Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana. 
The enthusiastic personal element that plays through these 
individual yet social projects lends an unusual strength to 
such topics. The man's life and energy are absorbed into 
and identified with the undertaking. He becomes a power- 
ful and living exponent of a national or world idea. For 
instructional purposes such projects, thus reenforced by 
personal, objective demonstration, are of surprising value. 
We can afford to work out such projects descriptively and 
more or less exhaustively till we find a full background for 
the main idea, the completed purpose. 

Fifthly : The masterpieces of literature are the outcome 
, of thought projects conceived and elaborated in the minds 
of authors, for example, Plato's Republic, St. Master- 
John's Gospel, De Foe's Robinson Crusoe, Shake- pieces in 

*^ . . literature 

speare's Macbeth, Longfellow's Building of the considered 
Ship, Fiske's Critical Period of American History, ^^ pj^^jects 
Plutarch's Lives. A drama or novel or poem is the 
energy of the author's thought working itself out and 



10 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

projecting itself into a great thought-movement. It is 
active and stimulating, and yet is caught and held somehow 
in a permanent artistic form. A masterpiece is a tangible 
literary project, a rational undertaking looking toward a 
well-planned achievement. Literary products are the 
greatest projects of the human mind and a's such they are 
the best examples of great thought units, of knowledge 
rightly organized and artistically grouped. As perfected, 
energized thought-movements, complete units of effort, 
they demand thoughtful, elaborate, progressive study. 
The outcome of such study is a full appreciation of their 
constructive, dynamic quality and their final unity. 

By a survey and comparison of these various interpreta- 
tions of the term project as seen in the several studies, we 
may conclude that it is a practical, untechnical word with 
which to designate a variety of big, vital topics. It lays 
stress upon the actual and objective in present and past 
experiences. It deals with an energetic, growing idea, 
concretely embodied, that expands into a strong, even, 
national influence. \ Projects force attention upon the main 
objects of study, tlie chief enterprises that make up the 
warp and woof of real life in our times. 

At the present moment we need to be jolted out of our 
conventional, formal school phrases and to find terms better 
. ^ ^ adaipted to the educational needs and forces of 

A return to ^ 

life and the hour. The term project is a newcomer among 
educational phrases. It seems to suggest not the 
school but the shop, not the textbook but the busy mart, 
the industrial life, the unhallowed things of the schemer 
and the promoter. Perhaps this is its merit, that it forces 
attention upon things that have come to importance in 
life, things which need to break over the threshold into the 



PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL II 

school. The project idea suits our present needs because 
it tosses aside our conventional abstractions and sets up 
a larger practical unit of knowledge as the basis of study. 
We have been dealing with things of nciinor import till we 
have lost sight of the centers of thought, the big object 
lessons. We have devoted ourselves to facts, mere facts, 
isolated facts, — yes, detached and meaningless facts. 
The children have been surfeited with facts. But it is 
time to stop making collections of blank cartridges and 
begin to gather only those things that have explosive ma- 
terial in them. Again, we have played with school phrases 
and generahties and summaries till they cease to express 
thought. It is time to cast out this mummery and to deal 
with Kve thoughts embodied in real projects. 

The term project suggests a return to life, to business, to 
applied science, to daily duties and common human needs, 
to forces operative in the concrete world. The school is 
absorbing into itself as fast as it can the big things of life, 
the schemes that men and women are chiefly concerned 
about, and these are becoming our school topics. The 
project accentuates this demand for the practical and 
demonstrable. By a proper extension of the term it in- 
cludes several groups of big, constructive units of study in 
history and geography and science, and culminates in the 
masterpieces of literature and works of art, as poems, 
buildings, sculptures, and paintings, because these at 
their best are great designs worked out by artists to express 
the mind's boldest flights into the world of experience, the 
supreme purposes and projects that men have conceived. 

The project, as such, is an apt device for teaching, be- 
cause it touches off any important enterprise at its most 
interesting crisis, namely, at that juncture where it is in 



12 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

the initial process of being brought into shape in the 
mind. Pedagogically, we might call this " the nick of time " 
r "e t ^^ thinking out any enterprise. At this point it 
a scheme in shows itself in its freshness and newness, its ex- 
t ema ng pgctation, its purpose. Its growth from this initial 
stage should be natural and progressive. Let the project 
develop in its own way, revealing its ugly form or its pleasant 
aspect as it will. The succession of problems will follow 
in due order. The important project is always a problem 
and a mother of problems. The demand of the hour is to 
have a chance to think, to knit the brow in thought prob- 
lems, to struggle with a difficult and critical situation till 
a solution of the problem is discovered. Live projects, 
wisely selected, not only set up serious problems, but they 
draw in their wake the knowledge materials required for 
the understanding and solution of the problems involved. 
Big projects are deeply rooted in the strong knowledge 
elements of the important studies. A deeper and richer 
scholarship inevitably clusters and organizes itself around 
the main projects. This is so because our modern social 
and industrial problems have sprung directly out of a full 
field of scientific, historical, and economic knowledge. 
These deep, abundant sources of knowledge are our neces- 
sary tools in working out our projects. Extensive and 
up-to-date knowledge is requisite to work out and under- 
stand these practical projects. One proof of this need for 
depth and richness of knowledge in discussing these projects 
is the fact that even trained experts in the various special 
lines are required in all these big, practical enterprises. 

We have been discussing the word project as denoting 
something objective and concrete. But back of this, its 
real meaning lies in an idea, in something thought out and 



PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL I3 

clearly conceived, first as a mental product, later to be 
worked over and transformed into a concrete reality. The 
synonyms of the word project are scheme, plan, de- 
signXjxi this sense the project is first of all a clear, a mentar*^ ' 
clean-cut, intellectual grasp of a whole complex concept to 

DC r6£LLlZCQ 

situation. It corresponds to the well-worked-out 
design of the architect which expresses the plan of a great 
building. The project is a strongly, wisely organized body ' 
of thought focused upon an important center of practical 
knowledge with a definite purpose. It is the intellectual 
formulation and mastery of a problematic situation as a 
preparation for its practical execution. It leads on through 
a series of wisely controlled actions. In the idea of the 
project lies also the impulse to realize it, to carry out the^ 
purpose clearly conceived, for example, the sinking of a 
shaft for the purpose of exploiting a coal bed. This demand 
for clear thinking as a basis for later action, leading on 
naturally to a complete accompKshment, makes the project 
an ideal basis for teaching and for lesson planning. The 
project sets up something clear and complete in thought 
but lacking in fulfillment. It sets up the demand for full 
reaHzation, and this is a dynamic quality which energizes 
effort in the right direction. 

Standing out prominently, almost objectively, as a clearly 
thought plan to be converted into reality, the project con- 
tains the most important elements of a standard ^, ^ ^ 

^ ... standard 

unit of mental effort. First, it is an important elements in 
whole. Secondly, it is dynamic in its essential * ^^^^^^^ 
forward movement. Thirdly, it organizes and uses knowledge 
on the basis of a definite purpose. Fourthly, it sets up a 
series of problems requiring continuous, rational effort. 
Fifthly, it works out a practical result which is embodied 



14 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

in a concrete object or situation in real life. Sixthly, as an 
end result of the whole movement, from original conception 
to final objective realization, it leaves in the mind a knowl- 
edge product which serves to introduce and explain other 
kindred projects. It has a future as well as a past and 
connects up between the two. Thus it contributes to the 
continuous organization of knowledge. 

Important projects, therefore, carefully selected in the 
various studies, are the practical units of thought, the organ- 
izing centers, where knowledge is collected and 
School proj- incorporated into those powerful agencies which 

6 CCS 6JL'* 

press and carry on the world's business. Thinking out 
J2e^^" and understanding these projects puts the student 
into the stream of action, into the current of life. 
We demand that education be a preparation for life, but 
it can be this only by identifying itself with the main enter- 
prises going on in life, that is, with enterprises which have 
developed under Hfe conditions. Many of these enterprises 
are now active agencies, organizing and directing the social 
and industrial forces of the world. Others have grown 
up in the past and have created institutions which are still 
powerful as Hfe centers. Still others are mainly historical, 
but carry important lessons to us from past experience. 
The building and equipment of a monastery in medieval 
times was in those days a vital, Kving project. Hannibal's 
march across the Alps to attack Rome was a well-matured 
project. Hercules' scheme for cleansing the Augean stables 
was a true project in the modern sense. Joseph's far- 
sighted scheme for deaHng with the wheat crop of Egypt 
during the seven full years was a great project. 

But it is the projects of modern Hfe and society that most 
concern us. In the short period of school life children 



PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL 1 5 

should be led on till they gain insight, one after another, 
into the masterful projects that concern the progress and 
welfare of the people in their struggles to master the 
bountiful resources of nature. Such schemes concretely- 
worked out form naturally the big centers of study. They 
designate the main channels along which human life has 
organized its experiences and converted them into institu- 
tions through which men have been able to accomplish 
their purposes. These very projects, already organized by 
experience into complete schemes and processes for accom- 
plishing the chief purposes of life, are the best units of 
study for the schools. 

Nor are these projects new or foreign to our present 
school course. A keener and closer inspection of these 
project-topics will discover that they deal with 
the self-same concepts which are now treated in Projects are 

. a stronger 

the textbooks. But only the more significant handling of 
subjects dealt with in the books are selected, and H^l^^^ 
by intensive treatment brought into marked 
prominence. They are given an emphasis and a fullness 
of descriptive exposition which are surprising. They are 
not new, and yet one thing in them is strangely new. They 
are dressed up in their proper clothing. We do not recog- 
nize them at first because we never before saw them in full 
equipment and with an adequate setting. For example, the 
increase of corn production in the United States, the project 
of developing San Francisco harbor, the building up and 
life history of Mount Shasta, the purpose of Ernest in the 
story of the Great Stone Face, how the blood circulates and 
performs its functions, the laying out of the school and 
home garden, a class at work dramatizing the story of 
William Tell, the designing and construction of a bird house. 



1 6 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

These and many more like them are not new topics. They 
are simply familiar topics enlarged into proper units of 
purposeful effort. They are fully embodied and demon- 
strated life problems. They are suggested and put before 
children in this more complete form to stimulate thought, 
to put the minds of children into natural, spontaneous 
action toward worthy ends. 

Conclusion. 

Projects reorganize the best knowledge materials of the 
elementary school around practical life centers. The 
smaller projects of children grow into the greater projects 
of the community and of society. These projects develop 
everywhere through series of problems undertaken with set 
purpose to realize important ends. The teaching possi- 
bilities that open up through the steady schoolroom pur- 
suit of these developing projects are both interesting and 
remarkable. 

A Forecast 

If the project is once accepted as the true t3^e of knowl- 
edge organized for teaching uses, it sets up the large unit of 
study as a basis for selecting and treating school subjects. 

The big unit of study is a superior substitute for the present 
somewhat miscellaneous collections. It^ is the clear demon- 
stration of a reconstructive principle which is now at work 
rebuilding our courses of study and reorganizing our class- 
room^ instruction. 

We have already gone to the limit of filling up our 
curriculum with all kinds of information and with many 
forms of activity. We have been so busy collecting these 
varied materials that we have not yet had time and strength 



PROJECTS IN THE SCHOOL ' 1 7 

to simplify and organize. The big, central unit of growing 
knowledge, the project, is the sure corrective to our present 
fragmentary accumulations of knowledge. 

The adoption of such large standard units of organized 
knowledge points directly toward a simplified course of 
study and to a sound basis for lesson planning. 

A second point of almost equal importance is the out- 
standing objective character of the project. It is never 
abstract and general. It is incurably objective. Teachers 
and textbooks drift almost invariably into abstract forms. 
But the acceptance of the project strikes the death blow at 
this prevailing tendency toward abstract method in teach- 
ing. 

The following chapters will elaborate the above-men- 
tioned points. 



CHAPTER II 
EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 

A BETTER understanding of the meaning and scope of these 
school projects may be gained from complete illustrations. 
This chapter is given over to such illustrations. Several 
projects are here worked out tentatively as suitable for 
school use. In the later chapters other projects are in- 
troduced to illustrate special points and are developed on 
a still larger scale. Many other school projects have been 
more or less elaborately worked out as monographs and are 
published in pamphlet or book form. In the following 
chapters frequent use is made (by reference) of these at- 
tempts to put projects into the form of complete imits of 
study. The project type of organization, as exhibited in 
these illustrations, helps to clear up the principles of method 
as directly applied to subject matter in teaching. 

Garden Projects 

The planning of a school or home garden is a project 
which has come into vogue in many schools and in all parts 
of the country. The garden work, planned for a season, 
is not only a practical project, but it develops into a whole 
series of minor projects which spring out of individual or 
family needs. The following table of contents gives the 
series of topics treated in a pamphlet entitled "The School 

i8 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS I9 

and Home Garden." ^ Without premeditated effort to 
emphasize the project idea, it evidently consists of a series 
of projects carried out in the natural order of development. 
The initial project, the measuring and staking out of the 
garden plot, is clearly shown by the chart on the following 
page. One of the minor projects is shown in the sketch 
of the hotbed. 

PROGRESS HILL SCHOOL GARDEN 

Table of Contents 

1. Introduction. 

2. Making a Garden Survey. 

3. Planning the Garden, 

4. Laying Off the Garden. 

5. Preparation of the Soil for Planting. 

6. Laying Off the Individual Plots. 

7. Making the Garden Paths. 

8. Selecting the Garden Vegetables, 
p. Study of Succession Crop Chart, 
fe. Frost Data for Georgia. 

11. Testing Seeds for Weeds and Vitality. 

12. Planting the Garden. 

13. Keeping the Garden Calendar. 

14. Germination. 

15. Making the Cold Frame. 

16. Making the Hotbed. 

17. Cultivating the Garden. 

18. Thinning and Transplanting. 

19. A Study of Soils. 

20. Studying Legumes as Fertilizers. 

21. The Home Garden. 

22. Plan for a Home Garden. 

23. Plan for Home Project Work in Gardening. 

1 "The School and Home Garden," by Miss Sue C. Cleaton, in Type 
Studies and Lesson Plans, Peabody College, Nashville, Tenn. 



20 



TEACHING BY PROJECTS 



24. Experimental Plots and Tests. 

25. Studying Weeds. 

26. Studying Diseases and Insects. 

27. Birds. 

28. Methods of Control of Insects and Diseases. 

29. Resistant Varieties. 

30. Sprays and Directions for Using Them. 

31. Spray Calendar for Garden Diseases and Insects. 

32. Cooperative Marketing. 

33. Saving the Surplus. 

34. Preparation of the Garden for the Summer Vacation. 

35. Beautifying the School Grounds. 

36. A Comparison of Garden Reports. 

37. Report of Home Gardens. 



MANURE 



SASH 

oFgroomd 




Showing Construction of a Hotbed 



List op a Few Home and Farm Projects 

Concreting a basement floor ; papering and decorating a 
family living room ; building a tree house ; making a tool 
chest; supplying the kitchen with running water; build- 
ing and hanging a gate ; constructing a corn crib ; planning 
and laying a tile for drainage; planning and building a 
chicken house; putting in an asparagus bed; the con- 
struction of a fireplace and chimney ; building a silo. 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 



21 



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22 teaching by projects 

The City of Washington, a Project 

The founding and building up of Washington as a capital 
city may be used as an example of a project which has been 
developing for more than a hundred years and is still in 
progress. 

After Congress had decided that the new capital should 
be located at some point on the Potomac, George Washing- 
ton was authorized to select a site and lay out the pre- 
Hminary plans. Washington cherished the idea that the 
new city should be conceived as a grand project destined 
to grow into a magnificent capital. He had a large con- 
ception of the future of our country, and the new capital 
city was to correspond to this idea in its development. 

Washington chose for his adviser in planning the city an 
eminent French engineer, L'Enfant, who had served in the 
Revolution, and explained to him his great conception of 
the coming city. Jefferson had collected in Europe a 
number of carefully drawn plans of European cities and 
these were sent to L'Enfant for his study. 

After a careful survey of the present site of Washington, 
then an open farming country, L'Enfant projected a grand 
city plan for the street system, including the chief locations 
for public buildings and squares. The streets were very 
broad, from 80 to 160 feet, meeting at right angles north 
and south, east and west. To give variety to this plan, 
at two central points in the city, circles or squares were 
established from which broad avenues radiated in all direc- 
tions, intersecting the other streets. The Capitol square 
and that on which the White House stands form such 
centers for street radiation, and these centers themselves 
are connected by broad avenues. 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 23 

An examination of the street system of Paris will reveal 
similar centers of organization for the street system. 
Washington thus may be said to be built in part upon a 
French plan. 

The constitution of the United States, which fixes the 
framework of our government, may be said, also, to de- 
termine the two chief centers for the capital city. At 
least Washington has two focal points in its organization 
as a federal capital, namely the Capitol Building and the 
White House, which are about a mile and a quarter apart 
and are connected by the broad Pennsylvania Avenue. 
The third department of government, namely, the ju- 
diciary, does not figure prominently in the architecture 
and street system of the city. The reason for this may be 
worth looking into. 

For many years after its first beginnings the city of 
Washington failed to live up to these grand expectations. 
It was a big city only in name and on paper. Its streets 
were muddy and its few public buildings were far apart. 
Its straggling houses sprawled out over a vast area and it 
was long known, in a joking way, as the city of magnificent 
distances. It was not unHke the United States itself 
during that early period, consisting in large part of vast 
unexplored and undeveloped regions. As a capital city 
Washington was as yet an unrealized project. And yet 
the nation was growing rapidly and Washington soon began 
to show signs of a corresponding growth. 

The best way to understand Washington, therefore, is 
first to examine the large-minded, prophetic plan under 
which it started out, the early halting steps at progress, 
and the occasional relapses. In the early part of the nine- 
teenth century and again after the Civil War, the early, 



24 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

comprehensive plan of the city seems to have been over- 
looked or disregarded, and a few great federal buildings 
were wrongly designed and placed, as the Treasury Building, 
and the great State, War, and Navy Building. In later 
years came stronger and more successful efforts to work 
out the great original design. In fact the development 
of the governmental departments in Washington reflects 
in a striking way the main stages in the rapid progress of 
our country in the first century and a quarter of its 
growth. 

The main building in Washington, and we may say the 
chief structure of its kind for the entire nation, is the great 
Capitol, with its massive dome dominating the scenery of 
Washington. It stands upon an eminence nearly a hun- 
dred feet above the Potomac. The cornerstone of this 
great building was laid by George Washington in 1793. 
It was then in an open country, now in the midst of a great 
city. The central structure, now only a part of the whole, 
was large enough to serve for both houses of Congress till 
the Civil War period. The old Senate Chamber is now the 
Supreme Court Room, the original House of Representa- 
tives is now the Hall of Statuary. The two vast wings of 
the Capitol, later built, contain at present the Senate 
Chamber and the House of Representatives. 

As the nation expanded westward and new states were 
added, the legislative department of the government had 
to expand to meet the larger needs. Not only so, but this 
large Capitol is now flanked on the north and south by 
two noble architectural structures, the Senate Office Build- 
ing and the House Office Building, for the special service 
of Congress. They contain six hundred rooms for the use 
of members of Congress as offices for the transaction of 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 2$ 

legislative business and are completely equipped for these 
purposes. 

Across the park that fronts the Capitol is the magnificent 
Library of Congress, a constant reminder to members of 
Congress that if they lack knowledge and wisdom with 
which to serve their country, here is the place to find it. 
In this beautiful and stately building are extensive col- 
lections of the most valuable books and reports, well ar- 
ranged and easily accessible. Here members of Congress 
and other officials may inform themselves on all important 
subjects so that they may legislate more wisely for 
a great nation. Copies of all books published in this 
country are sent to the Library of Congress, and other 
books from all nations and in all languages are gathered 
here and made available. This national Hbrary has a 
capacity for 4,500,000 volumes. The marble halls and 
interior decorations of this building are beautiful beyond 
description and are deserving of prolonged visit and study. 

Around this park fronting the main Capitol are thus 
grouped four great buildings devoted mainly to the business 
of lawmaking and for the convenience of the lawmakers. 
Their total cost was ^25,000,000. At this center and in 
these buildings are gathered, when Congress is in session, 
the representatives from every state and district in the 
nation to make laws for the government of all the people 
in the states. 

A mile and a quarter away, at the other end of Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue, the White House stands at the center of an- 
other group of national buildings, representing the adminis- 
trative department of the government. The White House 
is first of all the home of the President, where he lives with 
his family. It is also his official residence as President. 



26 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Clustered about it, some nearer and some farther, is a group 
of department buildings where tens of thousands of clerks 
and officials are engaged in public affairs. Just east of 
the White House is the Treasury Building, and on the 
west the great State, War, and Navy Building. The 
cabinet ministers have their headquarters in these and 
other administrative buildings. With the growth of the 
business of the nation the cabinet has been enlarged from 
time to time by adding new departments and by extending 
the government service into new fields. The Post Office, 
for example, has extended and enlarged its service until 
it reaches every nook and corner of the land, and is now 
identified with the business interests and home life of all 
the people. The Patent Office, with its vast collection of 
scientific and practical inventions, expresses the progress 
of the nation in ten thousand ingenious ways. By the ex- 
pansion of its various departments of government service, 
Washington has become a busy hive of workers in the 
state employ. In the recent emergency of a great war, 
demanding thousands of additional helpers, Washington 
could scarcely house and entertain the great influx of clerks, 
stenographers, and specialists urgently required. Visitors 
and leaders from all parts of the country also flocked to 
Washington on public and private business. Before the 
outbreak of the war, the city had grown to a population 
of 350,000, and now it is much greater. Instead of being 
scattered out over empty spaces, as once, the city is now 
well built with beautiful homes and avenues and is crowded 
to the limit. Baltimore and other neighboring cities must 
help take care of the overflow population. 

George Washington, before a house was built, had a noble 
conception of a spacious and beautiful capital city which 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 27 

would suit the character and needs of a great and ever ex- 
panding nation. The plan he adopted looked far into the 
future and contemplated a capital city worthy of America. 
The plan projected by L'Enfant and Washington has been 
in large measure adhered to, but in recent years a still 
greater conception of a capital city in harmony with modem 
ideas of art and architecture, of sanitation and municipal 
improvements, has come into view. 

In order to project a plan on this more expanded scale, 
with due regard to the best architectural and artistic ideas, 
there was appointed in 1901 a commission of notable archi- 
tects and artists who developed and reported to Congress a 
complete scheme of future improvement, using the old plan 
of L'Enfant and Washington as the basis. In the improve- 
ments more recently planned and now in process of exe- 
cution the enlarged design of the commission has been 
followed. 

In an article in the National Geographic Magazine for 
March, 191 5, Ex-President Taft has set forth the advantages 
of this elaborate and complete plan for the development 
and beautification of the capital city. A full series of 
drawings and panoramic views of the projected improve- 
ments is worked out with colored charts. These plans 
are likely to be carried forward and will make Washington 
one of the most interesting and beautiful capital cities of 
the world. Noble, sanitary, artistic city planning is to-day 
one of the chief concerns of the people in all parts of our 
country. Washington should be a shining example of 
great city-building. It will be one of the great achieve- 
ments of our time to make the capital city, Washington, 
a first-class illustration of architectural and sanitary street 
planning, of the artistic designing and grouping of public 



28 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

buildings and parks, of beautiful and imposing historic 
monuments, of first-class management of public utilities 
such as lighting, water supply, and car service, of libraries 
and education, and of beautiful, homelike, residential 
streets. 

This modernized, elaborate plan for the city-beautiful 
in Washington has for its central landmark the lofty 
Washington Monument. Along the axis of the Mall, 
stretching westward from the Capitol Building past the 
monument to the Lincoln Memorial on the bank of the 
Potomac, w^ill be a great series of parks and public buildings. 
At right angles to this a similar series of parks and great 
structures will stretch from the White House and grounds 
past the Monument to the Potomac near the harbor. A 
great memorial bridge will reach across the Potomac from 
the Lincoln center to Arlington. This scheme contemplates 
an extensive series of parks, boulevards, and bridges stretch- 
ing into the environs of Washington and reaching even to 
the Great Falls of the Potomac, twelve miles above the 
city. It is a magnificent dream of city improvement and 
decoration. 

The history of the original planning of the city and the 
more than one hundred years of progress along the lines 
laid out by Washington form a great page in our national 
story, but the outlook to-day is for a far greater achieve- 
ment, one perhaps that would astonish and delight even 
the prophetic eye of Washington. It will always be pre- 
eminently the city of George Washington, and yet Lincoln 
in the natural order has come to share on equal terms the 
honors of the national capital. 

As the plans already outHned are carried into execution, 
Washington will become more and more a place of profound 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 29 

interest and pride to all Americans. Every boy and girl 
should have a chance sooner or later, to visit this city and 
should read and study our national history in its streets 
and monuments and pubHc buildings, and should recall 
the great historic occasions that form the landmarks in its 
history. 

The foregoing is little more than an outHne for a study 
of Washington in its plan and growth and future. It 
should be reenforced by a careful examination of maps and 
photographs and may lead into special features connected 
with famous men and events in Washington. 

Washington differs from all other cities in this country 
because of the complete dominance of the governmental 
idea. This also leads naturally to the study of public 
buildings and architecture, and likewise into biography 
and history. 

Washington exhibits in a concrete form the chief phases 
of active government. When the city plan is thought of 
as a great project, growing and expanding with the increas- 
ing demands of government, it becomes an illuminating 
study of our national Ufe. References for further study 
may be named as follows : 

Washington Standard Guide. 

National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 27, 191 5. 

A Boys' Project 

THE OVERLAND TRIP TO CALIFORNIA IN '49 

In the winter of 1848 John Turner and his brother, living 
near Chicago, decided to start for the gold fields of Cali- 
fornia in the following spring. They were under twenty 
years of age, but they were enthusiastic in studying maps 



30 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

of the western country and in making preparations for the 
journey. At that time there were no railroads west of 
Chicago, and very few towns west of the Mississippi. A 
strongly built, covered wagon was secured, and, before 
starting, was well filled with the tools, clothing, provisions, 
camp equipment, guns and ammunition, saddles, harness, 
medicines, and trinkets that would be needed in the long 
trip across plains and mountains. 

The Turner boys hired another young man to go with 
them, and, supplied with six horses, they started in March 
for the distant gold fields. In the journey across northern 
Illinois they toiled along muddy spring roads, and forded the 
streams, camping out at night. At Rock Island they were 
carried across the Mississippi on a steam ferryboat and 
started over the wild prairie and grasslands of Iowa. Other 
gold seekers were traveling in the same direction, and they 
did not lack company. 

At Council Bluffs, on the Missouri, the boys halted 
for two weeks, and there joined a caravan of fifteen wagons 
and forty- two men for the trip across the plains of Nebraska. 
Having crossed the Missouri River, the long train of wagons 
and horses slowly followed the valley of the Platte River 
westward. Keeping close to the river they found plenty 
of water, wood for their camp fires, and grassy meadows 
where their horses could be picketed to graze of evenings 
and mornings. There was good hunting in the woods 
bordering the river. Crossing the river, occasionally 
on log rafts, they pushed on westward till they came 
to the buffalo country. Here the extra horses and rifles 
came into use. The boys left their man on the road to 
drive the heavy wagon, while they mounted horses and 
rode out upon the plains to chase and kill the buffalo. 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 3 1 

At that time vast herds of buffalo wandered over these 
grassy plains, coming to the river to drink. At night the 
men all came together at the camp, and around the blazing 
camp fires cooked the choice parts of the buffalo and 
cracked open the thigh bones for the precious marrow. 

After a week or two of this kind of sport, when the 
horses were tired out with chasing the buffalo and with 
hauling the heavy wagons, they halted at a grassy meadow, 
pitched their tents, and went into camp for two weeks. 
Bringing out their tools and a forge they repaired their 
wagons, reshod their horses, mended their harness and 
clothing, brought in the buffalo meat from the chase and 
cut it into long strips to be hung up and dried. 

The Sioux Indians from the north at one time threat- 
ened their camp, but the pioneers quickly formed a barri- 
cade of their wagons, and the Indians, though strong in 
numbers, were afraid to attack the camp defended by 
more than forty good riflemen. The Indians rode off and 
were not seen again. 

After two weeks of rest and refitting they broke camp 
and started for the mountains, still following the Platte 
along the North Fork into the foothills. Crossing the 
main ridge at South Pass, near where the Union Pacific 
Railroad was later built, they descended the dry, desert- 
like slopes of the mountains to the west, almost starving 
for water before they reached a branch of the Green River. 
From a high ridge four miles away they saw the sparkling 
waters of this stream and rushed down the slope and 
plunged, man and horse, into the stream, where they 
slaked their thirst. Pushing on through the mountains, 
they at last reached the small village of Salt Lake, founded 
a few years before by the Mormons. Here they rested 



32^ TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

for two weeks from their hard journey across the moun- 
tains and prepared to cross the salt deserts beyond Salt 
Lake. This broad lake in the midst of the western moun- 
tains was a refreshing sight to the well-worn travelers. 
Fremont and his men had been the first to explore this 
lake about six years before in his famous pioneer trip across 
the mountains. 

At Salt Lake the Turner boys joined themselves to 
another caravan of emigrants and all started across the 
deserts. It was a tedious march for men and animals, 
and when they reached the grasslands about the head- 
waters of the Humboldt River, all were tired out. Three 
men were selected to guard the camp and the rest at once 
fell asleep. But the guards, too, were weary, and were 
soon overcome with sleep. While the whole camp slum- 
bered, the prowling, thieving Snake Indians from the 
north crept into camp, cut the ropes that held the mules 
and horses, and drove them all off. Some four hours 
later, when the men awoke, they found not a single animal, 
and the whole company was thus left in the wilderness, 
hundreds of miles from California, with their heavily 
loaded wagons but no animals. In this distress they 
selected six of their strongest men, who were sent in rapid 
pursuit of the Indians. Traveling day and night for three 
days they were unable to overtake the retreating Indians 
with the horses. But they chased them so fast that the 
Indians left behind a few of the less speedy mules, and the 
men returned with these to the camp. 

The mules not being strong enough to haul the heavy 
wagons, pack saddles were made, and the most needful 
things were loaded upon the backs of the mules, and the 
whole party, leaving their wagons and goods in the wilder- 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 33 

ness, journeyed on foot the rest of the way to California. 
They reached the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Moun- 
tains before the winter snows set in. A wagon road led 
up one of the valleys by a roundabout way across the 
mountains, but the men chose rather a foot path which 
led by a zigzag way directly over the mountains. Reach- 
ing the highest ridges they looked down into the Sacramento 
Valley in CaHfornia, and then followed the American 
Fork down the mountain side till they came to the gold 
diggings. 

The next year, in making a trip from the gold mines 
to San Francisco, Mr. Turner narrates that he noticed 
a man ahead of him in the road driving a wagon that 
looked famihar. On coming up with it he discovered 
that it was his own wagon, which he had left the year 
before on the other side of the mountains when the horses 
were stolen. 

The Great Migration 

The story of the Turner boys illustrates the experi- 
ences which many other gold seekers had this same year. 
During the summer of 1849 about forty thousand emi- 
grants^ men, women, and children, crossed the plains and 
mountains to California. Many of them suffered dis- 
tressing hardships on the way from sickness and death, 
from lack of food, and from Indian attacks. A few of them 
came too late to cross the high mountain range before winter 
set in and were compelled to spend the winter on the 
east side of the Sierra Nevada, because the snow piles 
up on these mountain ridges twenty and even forty feet 
deep during the winter storms. 

From New York and other Eastern States thousands 



34 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

of people took ship for Panama and reached California 
after crossing the Isthmus and taking ship on the Pacific 
side for San Francisco. Many were taken sick with fever 
at Panama and died before the journey was finished. 
Still others went the long route by ship around Cape Horn 
and northward along the entire coast of South America 
to CaKfornia. Other gold seekers came from foreign lands, 
for the gold excitement had reached all countries. 

As a result of these various migrations nearly a hundred 
thousand people reached California during this first year 
of the gold excitement. The little adobe village of San 
Francisco grew in one year to a population of twenty 
thousand. At first there were many lawless men, who 
committed crimes and outrages, but the better class of 
sober people soon organized government and subdued the 
criminals and law-breakers. 

These things happened just after the close of the Mexi- 
can War, before which CaHfornia had belonged to Mexico. 
But before the end of 1849, the year of the great migration, 
the people of CaHfornia had become so numerous that 
they came together, formed a constitution, and sent word 
to Washington that they would like to be admitted to the 
Union as a new state. This brought on an important crisis 
in the poHtical affairs of the United States. California 
had no slaves and would naturally be admitted as a free 
state. But this did not please the people of the Southern 
States because they feared an increase in the number of 
free states. A fierce conflict was threatened between the 
North and the South. Henry Clay returned to Washing- 
ton in his old age and succeeded in his last great compro- 
mise in quieting the storm, and CaHfornia was admitted 
to the Union. 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 35 

The rapid increase of population and wealth in Cali- 
fornia led the people to wish for a closer connection be- 
tween the Eastern States and the Pacific Coast. In conse- 
quence the project of building a Pacific railroad was 
proposed in 1850, and every year from that time on the 
matter was taken up in Congress. But the North and 
South, between 1850 and i860, could not agree where the 
raihoad should be built. Finally a bill of Congress was 
signed by Lincoln as President, and the Union Pacific 
was begun, and after several years was completed in 1869. 

The gold discoveries in CaHfornia led not only to the 
settlement of California, but to the opening up of Oregon 
and Washington, so that a group of Pacific States was soon 
growing up which developed the resources of the whole 
Pacific Coast. 

In 1859, ten years after the gold find in California, 
important gold discoveries were made in the Pikes Peak 
region of Colorado, and people flocked to this region as 
they had done before to the far West. Denver sprang 
up and became a flourishing city. Silver and gold mines 
were developed on a large scale, and the discoveries ex- 
tended further north and south along the Rocky Moun- 
tains. The gold and silver production soon began to rival 
the wealth of California. Before long a group of Rocky 
Mountain States was developing toward statehood. These 
two important gold discoveries had a powerful influence 
upon the early and rapid settlement of the Great West, 
in the founding of cities and in the growth of two impor- 
tant groups of states which are now an influential part 
of our Union of States. 

In later years rich copper ores were found at Butte, 
Montana, and gold in the Black Hills of Dakota. These 



36 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

discoveries had results similar to those already described 
in the founding of cities and development of states. 

The discovery of gold in Alaska at a still more recent 
date led to a rush of gold seekers to the frozen North. 
The hardships of the Klondike gold hunters were even greater 
than those of the forty-niners. As a result the remark- 
able resources of Alaska, not in gold alone, but in forests, 
coal lands, and fisheries, have been made known to the 
world. Lines of ships with extensive commerce have 
been estabHshed from Seattle and other western cities to 
Sitka, Nome, and other ports in Alaska. 

A little reflection will convince us that these rapid move- 
ments of population westward at the time of the gold 
discoveries are only a striking part of the great westward 
movement of the American people which has now been in 
progress for three hundred years since the beginnings of 
Jamestown and Plymouth. Looking still further back, 
the movements of people which led to the settlement of 
the thirteen original colonies were from Europe — west- 
ward ho ! 

The above unit of study, which begins with the trip to 
California in '49, is a good illustration of these large, central 
projects. It exhibits a progressive thought development 
through two main stages. First, the full narrative of per- 
sonal experience, which gives a rich descriptive background 
for all the later discussion ; secondly, the steady growth 
and expansion of the topic to include the entire migration 
to California and the Pacific Coast, then to the Rocky 
Mountain States, to Alaska, and at the close a brief survey 
of the whole westward movement. Around the central 
idea of westward advance is grouped and organized in a 
natural order a large and important aggregate of historical 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 37 

and geographical knowledge. Such a study begins in 
definite, interesting, personal experiences, develops into 
large state interests, and then expands into national im- 
portance. It finally gives a broad and significant survey 
of our whole history, even points back to great European 
migrations and becomes a world topic. Such a unit 
of study naturally grows into large proportions. It 
cannot be squeezed into the narrow limits of a twenty 
minutes class period. Our big topics demand time and 
space and rich materials with which to work their full 
influence. 

Teachers in order to handle these big topics must study 
them thoroughly and master them completely. 

The Muscle Shoals Project 

At the Muscle Shoals on the Middle Tennessee River, 
the Government of the United States is now at work upon 
a national project which was held to be of vital importance 
to our country in time of war. At the Muscle Shoals 
is a long series of rapids where the whole volume of this 
broad river drops down 140 feet. Here is a natural water 
power which the Government has decided to make use of 
by building dams and an electric power station to produce 
nitrates for the manufacture of explosives. 

The Congress of the United States passed a bill authoriz- 
ing the president to select the site for this national plant 
and appropriated twenty million dollars for the work, 
later increased to sixty millions. This at once brought 
the Muscle Shoals district into much prominence. Up 
to this time the Muscle Shoals have been chiefly known to 
the world as an obstruction to steamboating and commerce 
on the Tennessee River. Several millions of dollars had 



38 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

been spent in canals and locks to overcome these difficulties 
in navigation, but without much success. 

Among all the important water powers found along Ameri- 
can rivers, why should the Muscle Shoals be chosen at a 
time of pressing national danger as the one spot for estab- 
Hshing the government's largest hydro-electric power plant 
for the production of nitrates ? 

To find an answer to this question the President and his 
advisers had to deal with a series of important and interest- 
ing problems. 

I. Is the power that can be generated at the Muscle 
Shoals great enough and can it be kept up steadily through- 
out the whole year so as to meet the full demands for such 
a plant? There are periods of flood in spring and of low 
water in summer, and the amount of power is quite variable 
during the four seasons. Here was a problem for expert 
engineers, who must study the record of the river and its 
tributaries for many previous years, to ascertain the facts. 
The government would require for the success of such 
a plant at least 120,000 horse power continuous through- 
out the year. As the result of their studies and figuring 
the engineers came to the conclusion that the river at the 
Muscle Shoals can furnish 250,000 steady horse power, 
and for the greater part of the year up to possibly 600,000 
horse power. This makes it, next to Niagara, the largest 
single water power in the United States. The Muscle 
Shoals have the advantage also of being far enough to the 
South not to be obstructed with ice in the winter time. 
In order to secure the largest steady supply of water for 
the Muscle Shoals, it will be necessary also to build reser- 
voirs in the upper tributaries and sources of the Tennessee 
River in the mountains. The extension and development 



EXAMPLES OP COMPLETE PROJECTS 39 

of forest reserves for holding back the storm waters will 
also help to regulate the flow of waters in the flood 
season. 

2. But why is it necessary to have such a plant at all? 
What are the sources from which we have heretofore ob- 
tained our nitrates? Inquiry into this point brings out 
the fact that we have at present in the United States no 
source of supply for nitrates at all adequate for meeting 
the urgent demands of war. Nitrates have been shipped 
into the United States in large quantities from Chile, a 
far distant country. A hostile nation strong enough on 
the sea to cut off that supply could make us helpless in 
the midst of a great war. In order to be safe our country 
must have a supply at home large enough to meet all 
demands. 

3. How can the water power at the Muscle Shoals pro- 
duce these nitrates in sufficient quantity to satisfy our 
needs ? A study of this question brings out the fact that 
we have plenty of nitrogen all about us in the atmosphere. 
The main question is how to get hold of it and put it to 
use. Scientific experts have discovered a method of doing 
this. By means of the electric current it is possible to draw 
nitrogen from the air and combine it with other substances 
to produce nitric acid. The nitrates thus formed can be 
used in making explosives. Such is the purpose of this 
hydro-electric power plant at the Muscle Shoals. 

4. Another question to be answered is, What are the 
raw materials that combine with the nitrogen of the air 
to form usable nitrates? Are these substances found in 
the neighborhood of the Muscle Shoals? Limestone is 
known to be the chief of these raw materials and limestone 
is found at the Muscle Shoals in unlimited quantities. 



40 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Coking coal is also needed and that is obtained from the 
Tennessee Valley and at Birmingham not far distant. 

5. One of the important considerations was to find a 
location for this plant where it would be safe from attack 
from all foreign enemies. It must be within what is known 
as "the safety zone" far from the seashore or from boundary 
lines of foreign countries, even beyond the reach of hostile 
airplanes. The government entered upon a survey of 
our various water powers from this point of view. Of all 
our large water powers on American rivers the Muscle 
Shoals were found to be best located with respect to 
foreign enemies. 

6. What use could be made of such an expensive plant 
in time of peace? A study of this problem brings out the 
surprising fact that a nitrate-producing plant is quite as 
valuable in peace time as in war, because these nitrates, 
when combined with phosphates, form the best of all fer- 
tilizers for the enrichment of agricultural lands. The mak- 
ing of the fertiHzers for restoring the productivity of 
worn-out lands is one of the most important problems in 
the United States to-day. In the cotton states of the 
South and along the Tennessee River there are millions of 
acres which need these fertilizers in order to maintain the 
productive power of the soil. Again, just north of the 
Muscle Shoals in Tennessee is an extensive deposit of phos- 
phate beds which will supply this essential material. 

It is to be noted also that a large hydro-electric plant 
like this at the Muscle Shoals supplies in time of peace a 
source of power for commercial and manufacturing purposes. 
This power can be carried on transmission Hnes to Memphis, 
Birmingham, Nashville, and other cities and towns within 
a radius of two hundred miles, and put to use for running 



EXAMPLES OF COMPLETE PROJECTS 41 

factories and street car lines, for lighting cities, and even 
for household uses. The agricultural and industrial wealth 
of a large as yet undeveloped region along the Tennessee 
River will be greatly increased by establishing this impor- 
tant plant. 

7. What will be the effect of this power plant upon the 
navigation of the Tennessee River? The building of 
three dams at the Muscle Shoals, each of which is suppUed 
with large modern locks for passing boats and barges up 
and down stream, will have the effect of completely remov- 
ing all obstruction to navigation. The pools formed above 
the dams cover the shoals and make deep, safe water for 
the passage of boats. The Muscle Shoals Project, when 
completed, will open up the whole Tennessee River from 
the Ohio to above Knoxville to free navigation for large 
steamers and barges. With all obstructions removed, an 
extensive river commerce is likely to grow up and cities 
like Florence, Decatur, Chattanooga, and Knoxville will 
have the advantage of a cheap transport for heavy products 
like coal, lumber, iron, marble, grain, and other raw ma- 
terials. 

8. A natural water power put to service is a substitute 
for coal. It has been estimated that the full use of the 
water power at the Muscle Shoals will save one and one half 
million tons of coal in a single year. This coal, at ^3 per 
ton, would be worth ^4,500,000. The development and use 
of a great water power is thus a means of saving this amount 
of fuel. In other words, this is a plan for conserving the 
coal supply of our country for future uses. Engineers 
have estimated that we have about 60,000,000 of unused 
horse power along the rivers of the United States. When 
all these natural forces are put into use, supposing that 



42 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

each horse power is the equivalent of three tons of coal 
a year, it would bring about an annual saving of i8o,- 
000,000 tons of coal. The labor, machinery, and expense 
of running the coal mines could then be largely spared and 
turned into other channels of production. 

9. Why should the government rather than some rich 
private company undertake this project as was the case at 
Keokuk and at Niagara? 

Congress has decided that the safety of the nation is 
dependent upon a full supply of nitrates to be used in the 
manufacture of explosives. The production of this supply 
of nitrates should be wholly under the control of govern- 
ment so that the full power of the nation can be used 
promptly in time of war. For this reason the Muscle 
Shoals plant will be built and managed entirely by the 
national government. 

A proper study of the Muscle Shoals Project, and of the 
many problems connected with it, is merely a lively and 
instructive introduction to a much larger topic, namely, 
— the value to our nation of our unused water powers. 
In this connection there should be examined and studied a 
physical map of the United States upon which are located 
all these rivers with their valuable water powers. Among 
these are the rivers of the Southern Alleghenies, the Atlan- 
tic seaboard rivers, including those of New England, and the 
Mississippi River with its numerous tributaries. The Rocky 
Mountain and Pacific Coast streams will be found to furnish 
our largest resources for hydro-electric plants. The future 
wealth and power of the United States, the growth of its 
cities and population centers, the increase of its commerce 
and manufactures, and even its agriculture are largely 
dependent upon this one idea, the utilizing of the natural 



EXAMPLES OP COMPLETE PROJECTS 43 

but as yet unused water powers of our rivers. The Muscle 
Shoals Project with its interesting problems, fully presented 
and discussed, opens to a clear understanding one of the 
chief agencies for developing the resources of the United 
States. This power plant in a large way will contribute 
to the direct improvement of agriculture, of mining, of 
commerce, and of manufacturing. If we keep the Muscle 
Shoals Project clearly in mind it will throw light upon the 
more general discussion of projects which is to follow. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS LARGE UNITS 

OF STUDY 

The emphasis given to projects in Chapter I is justified 

because these projects are big, commanding topics which 

^ * deserve to hold an influential place in our school 

The need of ^ 

large study- studies. In the necessary reorganization of our 
"^*^ curriculum, the big projects, or what we may 

now call large units of study, are bound to hold the chief 
place. They are becoming more and more the centers of 
organization for knowledge materials. The thoughts and 
labors of both teachers and children are to be focalized 
strongly upon these main centers of knowledge. We 
need, therefore, to get a clear conception of these large 
units of study which are coming into such a commanding 
influence. 

A big unit of study brings together and ties up in one 
bundle a large number of related facts forming a well-con- 
structed whole. Otherwise these facts might remain 
disconnected and meaningless. In giving prominence to 
central units in instruction, we emphasize the larger group- 
ing of related facts or organization around natural centers 
of thought. Again, this organization of facts or of knowl- 
edge materials into a unit is designed to give a setting to 
a single important idea which in turn is the principle of 
organization. 

The big-unit conception applied to the curriculum as- 

44 



SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS UNITS OF STUDY 45 

sumes that each main study such as history, science, litera- 
ture, or geography is built up out of these large wholes or 
units of knowledge rather than out of individ- 
ual facts. The separate facts are too small and •^*?*^ *° ^® 

^ ^ , ^ collectea 

fragmentary to serve as units of construction in about im- 
knowledge building. Facts indeed we must centers 
have, and in spelling, primary reading, writing, 
arithmetic, that is, in what are known as formal studies, 
the mastery of individual facts counts for much. But 
we have been totally misled in supposing that the separate 
fact counts for much in history, science, literature, geog- 
raphy, or in any rich content subject. The enlargement 
and enrichment of our recent course of study compels us 
to abandon this itemized, bookkeeping style of knowledge 
and to focus our attention upon big projects as thought- 
centers around which the numerous facts are organized. 
The big-unit conception of knowledge assumes that each 
study is framed up out of large timbers or structural units. 
Knowledge is like a big plantation which is made up of 
large fields, but not of individual acre lots, or like our 
Federal Government which is combined out of large politi- 
cal units called states and not out of an endless multitude 
of small townships. 

Such units of instruction are easily pointed out in all 
the important thought studies. The Declaration of 
Independence, for example, with the facts and Examples of 
consequences that properly group themselves large units 
around it, is such a focal basis for historical survey. The 
history and development of the steam engine is such a 
series of important stages or problems. In this progress 
it gathers into its own sphere of influence a large assemblage 
of historical events and of scientific data. It is still going 



46 TEACHING OF PROJECTS 

on and will continue to be an organizing center of influence 
in human affairs. The building of the first Pacific railway, 
the discovery and exploitation of gold in California, Colum- 
bus' first voyage, stand out as natural, conspicuous begin- 
nings and centers in historical progress. In appHed science 
equally valuable centers appear, as the heart and circula- 
tion of the blood, the invention of the telegraph, the Hfe 
history of a butter^y, soil fertility and its preservation 
in agriculture, Mt. Shasta as a volcano, yellow fever and 
the mosquito. 

In the nature of the case, we are compelled to pay atten- 
tion to individual facts, but only as they are sensibly 
grouped around these important thought-centers which 
are properly called teaching units. The recent expansion 
of our curriculum so as to encompass an ever increasing 
multitude of facts has forced us to enlarge our vision, to 
take in larger wholes, to group and organize facts into a 
few centers so as to bring them under the mind's control, 
in other words, to simpKfy and unify knowledge. As 
knowledge becomes more extensive we must search for 
fewer and stronger centers of organization. 

If we are to reorganize our method of classroom instruc- 
tion on the basis of these big projects or knowledge units, 
.^ omitting many minor topics and detached facts, 

Large units . . 

negatively it bccomes neccssary to determine, as clearly as 
possible, the character of these big units. What 
are the earmarks by which we can detect such a standard 
unit of study? Let us define a unit first negatively by 
telling what it is not. First : Such a unit is not a fact. 
A single fact standing alone is meaningless ; a host of such 
facts may be equally meaningless. A group of facts 
properly organized and controlled by an idea may be 



SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS UNITS OF STUDY 47 

of the utmost value. Facts are important and necessary 
but only when properly combined and related. A lesson 
made up of isolated facts or of bare enumerations or Hsts 
of disconnected facts is too fragmentary. A single fact 
interpreted by its bearing on other facts and in its wider 
relations may grow into an important center of thought. 
But mere single facts or dates in history, the bare names of 
places on the map, are not important enough to be studied 
and learned. Facts that do not demonstrate the influence 
of organizing ideas fail to function. Examinations based 
on disconnected fact material are trivial in value, like 
picking over rubbish heaps. This desultory treatment 
of scattered facts is a waste of time and a training in the for- 
mation of bad habits. 

Secondly : A unit of study is not a miscellaneous collec- 
tion of even important facts. The mere naming or list- 
ing of facts on the assumption that they are important 
carries no meaning to a child. Some of our textbooks 
are padded with puddingstone collections of presumably 
important facts. Rational reflection rejects all such mis- 
cellaneous data as a clog upon right thinking. Every 
important subject of study should stand out as a well- 
ordered whole, not a shapeless, accidental heap of facts. 
Thorough and repeated drill on such Hsts of facts is an 
inferior if not wasted form of mental effort. 

Thirdly : A unit of study is not identical with a lesson 
lasting twenty minutes — or forty minutes. A recitation 
period of twenty minutes is seldom just the amount of 
time required for the treatment of a real project, and yet 
not uncommonly teachers drop into a habit of considering 
recitation periods as equivalent to lesson units. Impor- 
tant units of subject matter usually require from four to a 



48 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

dozen lesson periods for their proper treatment, often still 
more. A fixed time limit, such as the daily recitation 
period, appears to be a wrong standard of measure for the 
large unit of study. The entire process of thought in a 
complete unit of subject matter is the determining factor, 
and this is subject to wide variation, contingent on the 
ability of the class and the nature of the subject. 

Fourthly : A proper unit of study is not a brief survey or 
outline of points for discussion. Such outHnes may hardly 
serve as substitutes for knowledge. Unless the outHne is 
accompanied with a parallel, full enlargement of each par- 
ticular, it is disappointing. Teachers and children alike 
suffer in school studies from a lack of nourishment, that 
is, of abundant actual knowledge arranged with reference 
to leading points. 

Presenting these mere outlines before teachers and chil- 
dren is like offering empty dishes to guests at a feast. It 
is cheap, easy work to supply outlines, but to furnish a 
well-arranged, fruitful collection of choice knowledge on a 
valuable subject is a noble gift. It is the result of pains- 
taking, thoughtful effort and rich experience. In provid- 
ing these fruitful, well-organized topics an opportunity 
is presented for performing a great service to teachers and 
children. It is astounding how few of our leading educa- 
tors have thought it worth while to furnish teachers and 
children a varied and full diet of knowledge. Theories 
of teaching are Ukewise no substitute for full knowledge, 
for rich scholarship. It is easy also to offer excuses for 
not doing this: "Let the teacher learn to help himself," 
"Do not tell children' what they can find out for them- 
selves." What a makeshift argument! In traveling 
through a desert country it is refreshing to come upon wells 



SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS UNITS OF STUDY 49 

of water and fruitful gardens provided by those who have 
gone before. To supply poor, meager outlines for other 
people to fill out is a lazy man's job. It is a common way 
of shirking a hard task. Let the leaders in education go 
forward and show by example how to work out rich and 
fruitful topics. A few such big teaching units or projects 
completely organized out of interesting, instructive thought 
material suitable for children would do much to give us a 
sound basis for classroom work. 

Fifthly : A unit of study is not a rule, or principle, or 
abstraction. At least this is not a suitable form in which 
to present it to children. In any case the abstract form 
should come later, when it is needed, as a natural outgrowth 
of the full treatment of the subject. It is deceptive and 
dangerous even to name by abstract titles big topics 
such as government, taxation, industry, or physiography, 
because teachers are so prone to fall back on a mere ab- 
stract phrase or definition as an adequate form of knowl- 
edge and wholly to neglect the sound basis of concrete 
teaching, i.e. full descriptive illustration and expansion of 
the unit. 

Unless the enlarged descriptive content of a unit of study 
is worked out into a definitely presented, enriching body 
of knowledge, a lean outline and shallow teaching are inevi- 
table. The teacher imposes upon the children the same 
hopeless burden of dull abstractions which has already 
been imposed upon the teachers. But the teacher has the 
same excuse, "Every child should think this out for him- 
self." What a pity that the child has no one upon whom 
he may roll the burden of making bricks without straw, 
of trying to think clearly without a realistic knowledge 
basis for thought ! 



50 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Turning to the positive side, what are the distinctive 
The positive ^larks of a Standard teaching project or unit of 
s^^® knowledge ? 

First : It is knowledge stuff in which there is a central 
organizing idea. This generative idea is not only the 
The basal focal Center but it is the principle of organization 
idea jj^ ^j^g development of the topic. Like the em- 

bryo in the seed it predetermines the nature and process 
of growth and the final result. The purposive idea is the 
living energy that shapes the big unit in its process of growth 
toward fullness and maturity. The architect's idea shapes 
the house. The idea of irrigation determines the process 
by which any big project of irrigation is worked out. The 
development of a distinct, unique character in fiction with 
its complete setting is a unit of study. Such a controlling 
idea, as a center around which a big topic organizes itself, 
is illustrated in history, — Washington's campaign against 
Yorktown, a real project; the first voyage of Columbus; 
in geography, the Erie Canal — all projects. 

A proper unit of subject matter contains within itself 
a complete, energetic thought movement because the or- 
ganizing principle of the topic is such a progressive, self-pro- 
pelling, purposive idea and demands its own full cycle of 
growth. Give this idea free scope to demonstrate its 
organizing power, and a strong, complete, well-rounded 
unit of thought is the necessary result. Burke's speech 
on Conciliation has just such a simple organizing principle 
of thought. The building of the Panama Canal rests 
back upon such a constructive idea or purpose. A rail- 
road system is projected and constructed upon the specific 
notion of the continuous transport of goods as a means of 
interchange between given regions. Ruskin's King of the 



SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS UNITS OF STUDY 5 1 

Golden River has a developing thread of thought which 
ties all its parts together into a complete story. The 
energetic, dynamic quality of the idea, combined with its 
constructive force in grouping and uniting thought elements, 
is what makes study a real achievement. Purposeful ideas 
are such dynamic forces at work in the world building up 
industries, shaping institutions, organizing and directing 
the business of life. Education consists in propagating 
these world-building ideas in the minds of children. Once 
planted in the fertile soil of receptive minds these ideas 
show their full growing energy, their organizing quality 
and strength. Genuine ideas are never static. Mere facts 
may become almost static memory products, but ideas keep 
on growing and gathering new materials around these 
old centers of thought. This growing, dynamic element in 
knowledge is its life-giving quaUty. 

The strength of these large projects as vital ideas lies 
in the fact that they are present, growing, life organiza- 
tions. Large mining, agricultural, and manufacturing 
processes, as big organized agencies for carrying on these 
operations, are the center and essence of these large teaching 
units. They are objective demonstrations on a large scale 
of local, national, and world processes in the industries. 
A big topic springs directly out of life, is rooted in life, and, 
when once understood, interprets Hfe. One of these big 
subjects fully cleared up and demonstrated explains a 
long developing process in the past up to the present, and 
then clearly forecasts and interprets the future, e.g. a 
study of the lumber industry. 

Secondly : A developing unit of study gathers to itself 
and embodies the full content of a rich, well-organized 
collection of knowledge. It is not a skeleton outline, but 



52 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

is clothed with the flesh and tissues, as it were, of a living 

organism. It is rounded out with the full complement 

, . of concrete, illustrative information. In this 

A center for ^ ' 

growth and particular of adequacy in treatment our textbook 
orgamza on ^.^p-^g ^^^ ^^^y scant ; they are not complete 

units of study and are not so regarded. They are so lean 
and unstable that they collapse like an empty sack for 
lack of content. The main thought lacks a background 
against which it can reveal itself in its full meaning. 

A good story or poem gives this embodied thought, 
this elaborate setting to the chief idea. In H or alius at 
the Bridge the spirited hero stands forth in the presence 
of both armies, the bridge and crowded walls of Rome 
on one side, and on the other the ranks of the Tuscan army 
with glittering war gear marching down from the northern 
hills. The whole setting is complete and cumulative. 
The Christmas Carol of Dickens gives a highly wrought 
description to exhibit the background and full biography 
of the growing Christmas spirit. The schoolmaster is 
beginning to learn the one great lesson taught in the works 
of first-class writers, to which there are no exceptions 
(from Homer to Kipling), that any idea worth presenting 
should have a complete, adequate, and even artistic setting, 
else it loses its force and degenerates into a poor, weak 
thing. It seems a thousand pities that the schoolmaster 
is sometimes slow to learn this lesson. He holds with a 
death grip to his logical outlines and condensations and 
abstractions. 

Every big unit of study as a developing project requires 
ample scholarship, a real life setting, a complete environ- 
ment for the idea. For teaching purposes we may give 
special emphasis to the objective or concrete character 



SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS UNITS OF STUDY 53 

of such units. The idea may be embodied in some person, 
as the idea of the Erie Canal in the person of De Witt 
Clinton, or in a striking object like the Brooklyn Bridge, 
or in some great natural landmark, such as Mt. Shasta, 
or in a natural agent, like a Rhone glacier ; or it may center 
in an important practical project, as the power plant at 
Niagara or the building of the first Pacific railway, or the 
laying of the first Atlantic cable. Such topics are not 
bookish and school-made, but practical and life-made. 
It is through these pragmatic topics that the school is 
able to strip off its artificialities and become absorbed into 
the ongoing activities and interests of a real world. A 
big [strong unit, like a well-loaded cannon, is one that is 
charged with a full measure of knowledge material. 

Thirdly: This developing unit of subject matter, or- 
ganized into a strong thought movement, an expanding 
project, is just one clear, complete, and convinc- 
ing illustration of a hundred or a thousand simi- 
lar movements. By means of a brief comparison with 
similar projects or processes this one illustration becomes 
the easily recognizable type of a whole class of kindred 
phenomena scattered up and down the earth. Explain 
fully the process by which the Rhone glacier is formed by 
accumulating snows upon the mountain slopes, and then, 
by pressure, consolidating and pushing its slow course 
down the winding valley, scouring the mountain sides 
and carrying the waste materials to lower levels where the 
ice melts away in the warmer sun, giving rise to the rivers, 
and you have described almost the exact process by which 
all mountain glaciers in all high regions of the world have 
been doing their gigantic work for centuries. To under- 
stand thoroughly the work of one glacier is to understand 



54 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

and interpret all glaciers. Describe one big steel mill 
at Pittsburgh as a business undertaking, with its blast 
furnace, converters, and rolling mill, giving the sources 
of its raw materials, and the use to which its finished prod- 
ucts are put, and one will easily master the problem of steel 
production wherever carried on in this or in foreign lands. 
Study out the machines and processes of one cotton mill 
and you will understand cotton manufacture, though it 
be carried on in ten thousand factories the world over. 
Likewise woolen manufacture and other textile production 
will be easily understood on the same basis. 

Wise people tell us that if we read and ponder well one 
great book, we shall understand the gist of many books. 
Fortunately for us the world is built on this basis of a few 
simple types. Master thoroughly a few of these essential 
and far-reaching types and the world of knowledge becomes 
tributary to our thought. 

So far reaching is this interpretative significance of the 
type that teachers have been misled into substituting for 
it the definition, which is the purely abstract form of the 
typical idea. The definition or general statement does 
contain a truth that might explain clearly a thousand or 
a milHon objects or phenomena. But this brief definition 
or abstract form of truth, though it be firmly memorized, 
fails to furnish the child with insight into the basal mean- 
ing, and it fails still worse in giving power to use such a 
truth so that it can work over into habit. Teachers are 
constantly falling into this trap, both teachers and chil- 
dren being caught and held in these abstract formulae. 
Out of such abstract definitions neither sound knowledge 
nor good habits can spring. The soil is too thin and poor 
to produce a good crop. In any subject the truth which 



SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS UNITS OF STUDY 55 

lies at the bottom must be concretely enriched and nourished 
and strongly organized in order to produce a fruitful crop 
of genuine knowledge. 

The type or project study, properly developed and en- 
riched, furnishes a sound, concrete basis upon which to 
build the structure of knowledge. In the effort to secure 
economy and efficiency in our methods of instruction we 
must keep in mind, first, the basal simpHcity in knowledge, 
resting upon a few central ideas or types, and, secondly, the 
deep fertilizing elements of concrete experience that must 
be gathered around the roots and beginnings of every im- 
portant topic of study. 

The basal principle in each case is plain. It stands out 
in large, bold rehef commanding wide influence. It has 
the strength of a giant for bringing together and organizing 
scientific, historical, or geographical material, and some- 
times all of these combined, and this whole, big unit becomes 
a larger measuring unit with which to test and judge other 
similar values on a broad and expanding scale. For knowl- 
edge in a big unit grows richer in power and scope as it 
develops. It is this outstretching power of an idea to lay 
hold of extensive data, and to organize them into a simple 
perspective, interpreting the world down long avenues, 
which gives such a study-unit its final complete value. 

A big teaching unit fully mastered in its facts, meaning, 
and relations becomes a clear and well-defined standard 
for measuring future units of similar character. . 

. . A standard 

This typical, mterpretative quaHty is quickly measuring 
discovered and set to work in big projects like ^^* 
the Erie Canal, the City of Washington, the historic Rhine 
River, or the influence of the Alps Mountains. Thought- 
ful measurements as to qualitative and quantitative rela- 



56 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

tions, as to similarities and contrasts, as to causes and 
effects, result in a still larger grouping and organization 
of knowledge. Such big units keep on growing, expanding, 
and organizing thought materials through the whole 
course of study. Thus are steadily and strongly built 
up the fundamental norms with which to measure and esti- 
mate values not only in school, but throughout later Ufe. 

Let such an idea spring up from a rich, productive soil 
of concrete knowledge and it will surely develop out of its 
small, local, concrete beginnings and through later compari- 
sons into a full world-meaning. It is only those big ideas 
which grow into this larger importance that we care to deal 
with. This is a world-building process and expands 
steadily to the interpretation of larger and yet larger 
wholes. It does not stop with the end of the school. 
Such school effort is rooted in experience and develops 
through life processes, and so it goes right on. Such ideas 
are the life of nations through which they maintain and 
develop themselves. It is not too much to say that the 
elementary school is deahng in a live way with the funda- 
mentals of social and industrial life. The study of a wheat 
farm in North Dakota grows easily into the great wheat belt 
of the Northwest with Minneapolis as its center, but before 
long it is measuring the wheat fields of Australia, of Argen- 
tina, of India, and of the Nile Valley and the ocean routes. 

Fourthly : As this central idea takes root and develops 

naturally in a child's mind, it organizes his knowledge into 

a growing habit of thought. His mind takes on 

A growing . 

habit of an expanding knowledge-structure which be- 
* °^^ * comes his own method of thinking. It not only 
organizes a child's knowledge into habits, but it reenforces 
these habits with powerful interests in the further develop- 



SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS UNITS OF STUDY 57 

ment of knowledge. In this manner a strong, genetic 
instruction may have a molding influence upon character 
as it develops. The succeeding chapters of this book will 
bring into view, one after another, the various important 
aspects of the Large Unit of Study as a growing project. 
It is the one fundamental concept in this book which we 
wish to bring to a clear and complete and explicit demon- 
stration. 

In closing this chapter we may note that we have been 
discussing only one of the three important aspects of these 
large developing projects or units of study. To show the 
far-reaching importance of the large standard Cinit we desig- 
nate these three points as follows : 

1. The large unit of study or project is the basis of our 
plans in this book for enriching classroom study. This 
is especially true in all the important thought studies and 
to a less degree in formal studies. 

2. A proper choice and serial arrangement of these im- 
portant study units is the basis for the organization of 
the course of study. The treatment of this point will 
require a separate volume. 

3. In the training of teachers we fall back upon the large 
standard unit of study as the center of operations. If 
teachers can learn to organize knowledge into such units, 
if they can master such topics before going into their classes, 
and can later carry out such well-planned instruction in 
the classroom, they will rapidly develop into efiicient 
teachers. To deal properly with this phase of the large 
unit as related to teacher-training will also require a sepa- 
rate volume. 



58 teaching by projects 

Summary of the Main Features in a Central Unit 

OF Study 

1. It has in it a basal idea, a center for the grouping of 
facts. Like a magnet it draws all things to one point. 
The story of Peter Cooper with his one great idea illustrates 
this. 

2. The unit of study has in it a developing process of 
thought which is its principle of growth. In this is a 
dynamic energy that keeps it active and constructive, 
Hke the design of a building in the mind of an architect. 
The process of smelting iron ore and of making steel prod- 
ucts at Pittsburgh is an example. 

3. Such a topic is concrete. Its idea is embodied in 
some object, or person, or process, like a machine or manu- 
facturing plant ; Hke some great power plant, at Niagara 
Falls ; or the projecting and building of the first steamboat. 

4. The purposive idea as it develops gathers to itself 
an instructive and valuable body of knowledge which it 
organizes into its own structure. Like a growing tree, 
it assimilates into its own tissues the materials it needs. 
Example, the Panama Canal. 

5. Such a large unit of study centers in some practical 
project Hke the building of a railroad or the laying of an 
ocean cable. It is not bookish and school-made, but 
practical and life-made. 

6. This life project, when worked out, is found to be 
the key and interpretation to a large number of similar 
undertakings. It is a clear type and demonstration of an 
entire class of important projects, scattered up and down 
the whole earth. It is a vitaHzed rule or principle. 
Example, the steam engine, a canal lock. 



SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECTS AS UNITS OF STUDY 59 

7. Let this idea grow and it will develop out of its small, 
local, concrete beginnings into a national importance. 
It is a world-building process and expands steadily to the 
interpretation of larger and yet larger wholes. Example, 
A Wheat Farm in North Dakota, The Trip to California 
in '49, The Harbor of New York. 

8. As this central idea takes root and develops naturally 
in a child's mind, it organizes his knowledge into a growing 
habit of thought. His mind takes on an expanding knowl- 
edge-structure which becomes his own method of think- 
ing and of interpreting the world. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ENLARGED OBJECT LESSON OR PROJECT AND 
ITS RELATION TO THE LEARNING PROCESS 

The project well worked out is simply a big object lesson 
in the process of learning — a demonstration of the right 
method of collecting, organizing, and mastering 
the MtoJ*,' knowledge. It might be called an explanation 
process in ^f ^y^q natural learning process. In executing 
a real project, a child almost loses sight of the 
fact that he is gaining knowledge. He is mainly absorbed 
in reaching results. As an active voluntary agent he has 
his eye fixed on the end to be reached. Struggling to 
achieve this purpose, he finds himself in the midst of a 
world of knowledge waiting to be put to use. The best 
way to acquire knowledge is to get after some important 
aim which compels us to learn what is necessary as a means 
of reaching this aim. Teachers have been groping about 
for a long time trying to discover this natural process in 
learning. On this plan, enterprising young men with 
little schooling have educated themselves very success- 
fully, — youths like Edison, Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, 
and Benjamin FrankHn. But it requires an unusual degree 
of originality and force of character to travel this road 
alone and unguided. The teacher can do much for aver- 
age boys and girls by the suggestion bf right aims and by 
occasional wise guidance in selecting and pursuing their 
projects. 

60 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 6l 

Young people have an instinct reaching after the impor- 
tant things in Kfe, but they often choose unwisely. They 
require guidance toward the better kinds of ex- 
perience and wisdom. At the basis of our hu- ^ion from ' 
man experiences are certain fundamental truths child ex- 

^ penence to 

which must be understood and put to use. It has world- 
been the business of philosophers and advanced oJ^gdem:? 
scholars to find out these truths, and to organize 
them into a system of knowledge which we call science. 
At first glance there seems to be a wide separation between 
this wisdom of philosophers and thinkers and the child's 
needs, at least as he sees them. It is the business of teach- 
ers to make this connection, to direct boys and girls in their 
own efforts to discover and master these world-truths and 
to identify their own interests and projects with them. 
To bring about this live connection between the child's 
interests and the world activities has been the great diffi- 
culty and even stumbling block in education. The proj- 
ects which we have been discussing seem to furnish the 
middle ground where the child, absorbed in his narrow per- 
sonal and social interests, can still begin to take on the 
larger purposes of society and thus appropriate the accumu- 
lated wisdom of this larger world. The basal truths of 
human life are often best revealed to children concretely 
in the working out of projects. For the project, developed 
through its important stages in a true Hfe setting, is a 
first-class demonstration of the growth of an important 
idea or truth. In our educational theory this is known as 
the inductive-deductive process of reaching important 
concepts or general notions. 

The growth of ideas, by which percepts develop into 
concepts, reveals the basis of the learning process. Think- 



62 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

ers and teachers have long been interested in the question 
as to how general notions are formed, whether they develop 
step by step from the observation and compari- 
the learning son of examples, or whether there is a shorter cut 
process ^ thinking by which concepts may be reached. 
This matter touches the relation of induction to deduc- 
tion in the thinking process and involves both in a close 
partnership. 

For practical purposes we may describe two theories 
regarding the learning process. First : Among teachers 
Xwo 2<nd school texts a long prevailing practice gives 

theories emphasis to general statements or concepts as a 
starting point in the treatment of important topics. For 
example, a recent primary geography describes climate 
^^ ^ ^^ thus: "The word climate means the usual state 

The first be- . 

gins with of the air, whether hot or cold, dry or rainy, 
generauties ^jj^^y ^j. calm." A book in English composition 
begins with this sentence: "Composition, from the word 
con, meaning together, and ponere, to place, signifies a 
grouping or arrangement of materials, generally with a 
definite end in view." A textbook in physical geography 
begins a chapter on glaciers with the sentence, "A glacier 
is an accumulation of snow, for the most part soHdified into 
ice, which is engaged in a slow movement from one place 
to another." Such definitions, at the beginning of a sub- 
ject, are not uncommon, but still more common are general 
comprehensive statements covering important topics in a 
condensed, summary fashion. A primary geography has 
this statement, "Iron, copper, gold, silver, lead, and zinc 
are metals. They come from rocks. The rocks having 
metals in them are called ores. We find iron ore, copper 
ore, and lead ore. Gold is often found pure in nature." 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 63 

Such brief, general statements make up a large share of 
the content of our elementary textbooks, especially for 
the beginning middle grades. Such an introductory state- 
ment on the first approach to any important topic is 
general and schematic, not definite and particular. 
In the introduction to history lessons, for example, 
topics dealing with the Puritans, with taxation, with 
state sovereignty, and with the constitution are mentioned 
briefly in general terms with Httle explanation, but with 
the expectation that these same topics will be dealt with 
more explicitly and fully in the later grades and in larger 
books. In the early study of such subjects children are 
not expected to comprehend fully and clearly what they 
learn. They memorize many statements not plainly under- 
stood in the hope that the future, out of its richer reserves, 
will make good this thought deficiency. Learning is a 
process of slow and gradual clearing up of concepts, begin- 
ning with statements vague and presumptive and gradually 
enlarging upon these at some later period with fuller re- 
sources of knowledge. It is the prevailing notion of 
putting off to a later time the day of clear and definite 
knowledge. It is the idea of a long twilight zone a twilight 
during the early approaches to knowledge. This ^°^® 
emphasis of conceptual or abstract knowledge in the 
early stages of learning is a favorite notion among 
adults and especially among teachers and textbook writers 
in their attitude toward children. It has also in its 
favor a long tradition of method and practice in the 
schools. 

The second theory touching the process of learning is 
the opposite of the foregoing. Knowledge should start 
with the concrete, the sensuous, the vivid. The first im- 



64 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

pressions on any subject should be registered in a child^s 
mind in clear and vivid pictures, in a strong and intensive 
^^ ^ . grasp of particular objects or situations, in ideas 

The begin- *-> i x ^ ^ ^ ^ 

nings in the keenly felt and objectively demonstrated. While 
concrete ^ quick, general survey of a situation may be 
allowed at the start, the emphasis falls upon the immedi- 
ately following enlarged and descriptive treatment of the 
topic, upon a full Ufe picture such as an artist would 
produce. 

In support of the second view, it is claimed that chil- 
dren at this early stage are not prepared for broad, general 

surveys of large domains in knowledge, that is, 
lines not" fo^ a mere framework to be held in memory 
^widr^^ ^®' until a fuller knowledge at some future time can 

be fitted into it. Children should fill in the frame 
at once with concrete picturing. They require forthwith an 
objective, intensive, and experimental acquaintance with the 
subject. The school should see to it that the early ideas 
gained by children are clear rather than vague, specific 
rather than general, intensive rather than neutral, keen 
and vital rather than pale and shadowy. The first time 
a good topic is touched upon in early years, it should strike 
a vital point and ring out in the child's mind with a clear 
and sharp meaning. Children ,have no time to waste on 
vague and empty phrases. In geography the description 
of a cotton plantation should not be condensed into a bare 
sentence but should expand into a vivid and reahstic pic- 
ture of plantation life. Just as a choice fairy tale or myth 
centers in a live character (Cinderella or Siegfried) who 
engages in strong or startling actions, so a history story 
should cleave to the exploits of a notable person, as John 
Paul Jones, or Robert Fulton, or William Perm. 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 65 

The main argument for dipping down deep into concrete 
reality in a new subject, at its first appearance, may be 
stated as follows : It produces a keen, sharp 
mental reaction and leaves a deep and permanent instead of 
impression. Future progress, also, in knowledge *°** ^ 
depends chiefly upon this quaHty of concreteness and vital 
force. Knowledge which lacks this sharp sensory element 
is vague and dubious,, and has little power for the assimila- 
tion of new subjects. Children demand a kind of knowledge 
that will function as a prompt, interpretative factor in 
the close-following studies. Dull and vague concepts 
have little power to interpret later subjects. Dry and 
stupid memory processes do not make children keen and 
aggressive in interpreting new situations, but the contrary. 
Nobody can work to advantage with dull tools, and these 
vague general notions are the dullest of all dull tools. If 
the early ideas children get are obscure and foggy, they 
are discouraging and unsatisfying in themselves and they 
serve no 'useful purpose in explaining new problems. It 
is just as well that they are easily forgotten. At the very 
start, therefore, children should get a keen sensory experi- 
ence and build up strong, apperceptive thought-centers, 
which become active power stations generating an onward 
movement into knowledge. Vivid object lessons should 
be the gateway to every new subject. 

Which of these theories should take the lead in instruc- 
tion? The first, the idea that children at first grasp the 
chief concepts vaguely, in broad general terms, a choice 
and that these concepts are only gradually cleared offered 
up and strengthened, or the second, the opposite principle 
that a clearly intelligible basis for an idea grounded upon 
objective reality is. demanded at the first, and a full under- 



66 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

standing within these narrow limits secured? The first 
theory has had a long and powerful influence in shaping 
courses of study and in guiding methods of teaching, and' 
an immense amount of actual instruction has developed 
upon this basis. The question that now arises is this, — • 
Is it economical and efficient? 

If we should take time for an historical survey of prin- 
ciples and methods in teaching, we should be convinced 
Historical that the first crude impulse of educators in nearly 
survey ^n cascs has been to begin instruction with im- 

portant general notions or concepts. At the present time, 
also, our textbooks show a preponderating tendency of the 
same sort — general notions first, and a gradual clearing 
up of these general notions through later instruction. The 
history of schools and of methods in the past 

Religion , r • i i • • -r» t 

gives us plenty of evidence on this point. Reli- 
gious education, the first to be taken up seriously, was 
based on the catechism, a brief summary of the most 
important religious doctrines. There is now, however, 
a strong tendency among progressive religious teachers 
to introduce for early religious instruction the stories of the 
Old and New Testament, to emphasize the historical books in 
preference to the doctrinal, at least in all early teaching, and 
also to make use of the biographies of reHgious leaders, mis- 
sionaries, and benefactors of recent times as examples. The 
catechism, if used at all, would then come at the end as the 
culmination of this plan of progressive reHgious education. 
In other words, there has grown up in recent times a strong 
tendency to reverse the old order of religious instruction, and 
to introduce such teaching with stories and biographies, with 
striking impersonations of ideas, and to bring in much later 
the abstract and doctrinal statements of religious truth. 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 67 

The Study of literature in schools and colleges was for- 
merly, and is still in some cases, a general description of the 
character and works of great writers, but not an j^.^^^^^^^ 
early study of the masterpieces themselves. In 
recent years we have almost abandoned these generaHties, 
these broad character sketches, and we have allowed 
the children to read and enjoy, from the first. Fairy 
Tales, Robinson Crusoe, the Arabian Nights, the Pilgrim's 
Progress, the Wonder Book, the Greek Heroes, Scott's 
Tales of a Grandfather, the King of the Golden River, 
the Lady of the Lake, and a host of other stories and 
poems which are the living concrete expressions of good 
literature, as furnished directly by the masters themselves. 
We have said good-by to those summaries, once the staple 
of school courses, those inane introductions to good Htera- 

ture. 

A generation ago technical grammar, the rules and prin- 
ciples of the English language, was commonly taught in 
the fourth and fifth grades {e.g. the eight parts ^^^^^^ 
of speech), but now we try to arouse children to 
a keen and practical interest in stories, in excursions, and 
in lively topics in nature study for composition. We are 
pushing formal grammar far ahead or even into the high 

school. 

Thirty years ago it was customary in some of the best 
schools to teach the principal concepts of mathematical 
geography in the fourth grade. Latitude, longi- ^^^^^^^j^y 
tude, and earth motions, — these general no- 
tions were regarded as an introduction to later topics 
in advanced geography. Such topics, as general con- 
cepts, are now left over to the grammar and high 
schools. The primary geographies of that period dealt 



68 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

with the broad, comprehensive phases of physical and 
climatic geography, of commerce, agriculture, and other 
large general topics. Since then a quite notable change 
has taken place in primary geographies in favor of 
a simpler, more concrete treatment of home topics. 
Home geography in its outdoor phases, — excursions and 
constructions, — is now strongly emphasized. The old 
order has been reversed. 

The first books in United States history some years 
ago gave a condensed outline treatment of the leading 
_. periods and topics of the whole course of Amer- 

History f ^ 

lean development. An examination of our recent 
texts in history will show that some books have abandoned 
these historical generalities and have gone over almost 
entirely to a lively treatment of the heroes of biography : 
Columbus, John Smith, Daniel Boone, Champlain, Wash- 
ington, and Fulton, that is, the personal, concrete phases 
of history. Even in grammar grades biography begins to 
play a very important part, as seen in the treatment given 
the lives of Samuel Adams, Franklin, Patrick Henry, Hamil- 
ton, Fulton, Webster, Henry Clay, or Lincoln. Our Amer- 
ican history is now being rewritten in the interest of con- 
crete, illustrative biography and narrative for the early 
years, and the schematic outHnes for primary books are 
being tossed into the waste heap. 

Even studies in botany and zoology have abandoned the 
old definitions and general descriptions of classes, and are 

dealing with outdoor excursions in fields and 
Science 

woods, with the descriptive life story of particular 
plants and animals, and are devoted to school gardening 
in their practical home uses and needs. Theoretical ab- 
stractions are at a discount in teaching children. 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 69 

Even in the early days of manual training, teachers and 

children in shops were dealing with the general principles 

of construction as worked out in typical joints 

1 1 r • • 1 1 • • Manual arts 

and modes of puttmg materials together, givmg 

emphasis to the main phases of technique. Now boys and 

girls are working in shops to produce useful, practical objects, 

as tables and stools, bookshelves and houses, while girls in 

domestic arts make dresses and prepare meals. Children 

in the grades now begin with practical, everyday, useful 

problems and projects, not with principles of technical 

construction, not with mere technique and tool practice. 

In these various ways progressive teachers have been 
demonstrating the importance of obj'ective, practical 
beginnings in all subj'ects and the unwisdom of imposing 
broad surveys and generaHties upon children in their early 
studies. 

This later tendency toward the early emphasis of objec- 
tive, concrete modes of instruction is in harmony with 
generally accepted principles of teaching as now 
presented in our schools and colleges. All of our method is 
pedagogical books and theories place a marked ^^^^^^^ *p 
emphasis upon the sensory basis of knowledge 
in early years, upon object lessons and sensory training, 
upon variety and richness in motor experience, upon ex- 
cursions, shop activities, games, and outdoor sports. The 
conviction is very strong among teachers and thinkers 
that the experimental basis of knowledge should be keen 
and strong and definite. But it is one thing to get certain 
principles generally accepted in theory, and quite another 
to put them into common practice. Barring exceptions, 
our textbooks and our school practice give the lie to our 
theories. 



70 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

In the first three grades of the primary school the prin- 
ciples of concrete, objective teaching are pretty generally 
adopted and worked over into effective practice. 
Primary "^e have many excellent primary teachers who 

schools 1 1 1 . • 1 

good in have mastered both the prmciples and the art 
mettiod ^^ primary instruction, and their work is up to a 

good standard; not so in the intermediate and 
grammar grades. We are in specific need of good demon- 
strations of concrete teaching in middle and upper grades. 
Our theories are good enough, but our textbooks and usual 
practice do not correspond to these theories. 

In the fourth grade for the first time we begin to use i 
textbooks in the important knowledge subjects, and this 

brings us into trouble, into serious and permanent 

Textbooks . . 

for inter- trouble. In the middle grades our primary text- 
Sad^e^s w-e ^ooks slight the sensory basis of knowledge, 
condensed They begin to condense and dogmatize and to 
impose the matured conclusions of adults upon 
young children. A famous teacher once replied to a stu- 
dent who was objecting to fresh, Hvely material not found 
in the textbook, saying : "Did you know that when knowl- 
edge is dead we put it into textbooks?" What an appall- 
ing proposition this is, if it is true ! An attempt is made 
in some introductory books to remedy this fault by the U3e 
of pictures, sometimes in excessive quantity. Such pic- 
tures, while excellent, are inadequate to supply that fuller 
background of knowledge needed in an important topic. 
The increasing prevalence of supplementary readers in 
history, geography, and science is another strong proof of 
the general conviction that the textbooks are lacking in 
the richer, concrete elements of knowledge. The pictures 
and supplementary readers are a help and palliative of 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 7 1 

temporary character, but they do not change the original 
textbook plan of abstract teaching for the course as a 
whole. The textbooks still remain largely condensed and 
abstract and it is difficult to find time, even if the illustra- 
tive materials were at hand,, to enlarge and explain so many 
abbreviated statements. The texts give a summary treat- 
ment to numerous phases of geography, history, and science. 

In spite of the improvements mentioned above, it is 
not expected that children will get a full and clear under- 
standing of any topic on its first presentation, but a second 
or third larger and fuller treatment of the same topic will 
follow after two or three years. In this manner these 
first vague concepts are expected to develop into greater 
clearness. Beginning instruction still takes on a general 
schematic character, not tangible and objective. The 
illustrative method so characteristic of primary grades is 
reversed in the middle grades and a dogmatic, generahzed 
instruction takes its place. A closer examination of the 
books and methods in common use in interniediate grades 
will bring to light this formal conceptual quaHty. It is 
a mark of the common tendency of the adult mind to im- 
pose its general conclusions upon children. 

It is exactly at this intermediate stage of the school 
course that we need to return to a positive emphasis of 
concrete modes of teaching. This principle of 
concrete illustrative instruction, as noted before, \^^^^^ *° 
has'-been successfully worked out and applied to methods in 
the three primary grades. In the fourth, fifth, ^te grades 
and sixth grades teachers generally have not 
employed illustrative methods with so large a degree of 
success. They have usually held more steadily to the 
books and to the usual routine of general statements to 



72 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

be memorized and recited. Illustrative methods in the 
middle grades have not yet developed into a strong and 
consistent plan of teaching. 

The middle grades open up a new world. In about the 
fourth grade we are entering for the first time upon 
important avenues of thought in history, in geography, 
in language and Hterature, and in science, which are 
destined to go on expanding to larger proportions 
through the grammar grades and much beyond. It is a 
matter of real concern how we make these beginnings. 
A child's first acquaintance with an important idea should 
be Hvely and reaHstic, not dull and formal. It should 
appear in a Hfe setting with all the reenforcements of a 
concrete environment. This statement requires no argu- 
ment, for thinkers on education are agreed as to the prin- 
ciple. The sensory basis of knowledge and the necessity 
for objective, tangible illustration as the introductory 
stage in all learning are acknowledged. Big, outstanding 
object lessons or projects, on a larger scale than heretofore, 
are required. By this is meant not a simple object as in 
primary grades, like a rock or tree, a yardstick or bushel 
measure, a house, or a picture, but a larger complex group- 
ing of objects or persons or both into a life situation, as a 
sawmill at work, a house observed in its process of con- 
struction, the description of an exploit hke that of WilHam 
Tell in the apple shooting, the account of a journey across 
the mountains, as of Lewis and Clark, the building and 
launching of a ship. It is these large panoramic or bird's-eye 
views of life situations that should stand out as conspicuous 
Panoramic centers of thought in these grades. Such com- 
views pjgx panoramic views are built up and put to- 

gether by a continued efEort of constructive imagination 






LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 73 

based on description or narrative, with a free use of pictures, 
diagrams, maps, sketches, constructions, and other devices for 
objective illustration. At this juncture we may well exhaust 
all our resources in the effort to bring together and allow 
the children to collect descriptive and illustrative materials 
of the choicest kind and to combine them with artistic 
skill into a complete and well-ordered setting for a single 
commanding idea. 

Having mastered the formal elements of reading, writ- 
ing, spelling, and language in the primary grades, the chil- 
dren are now prepared to make a plunge into gjgpj^jgj.tg 
knowledge, — that is, into this big, real, active 
world, a world of significant facts, a world of growing, 
strengthening, purposeful ideas, a world where important 
forces are at work organizing facts into big, purposeful 
groupings or projects. These big projects we call by such 
titles as the following : a voyage of exploration, the found- 
ing and building of a city, the survey and construction of 
a railroad or canal, the discovery and use of a great inven- 
tion, the printing of a metropolitan newspaper, the smelting 
and reduction of iron ores in blast furnaces and converters, 
the demonstration of mining projects and of large enterprises 
in agriculture ; in science, huge physical phenomena as a 
cyclonic storm, the building up of a volcano by successive 
eruptions, or an ocean current at its work. 

In entering upon these larger thought-projects we can- 
not afford to blunt the keen edge of curious knowledge 
and blur these important ideas upon their first a false 
appearance by substituting vague abstractions. P^^icipie 
On the contrary we may use our utmost diligence to see 
that they at once awaken a keen intelligence and strike 
deep into a child's life and interest. The common practice 



74 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

of introducing children of the middle grades into the gen- 
eralized, abstract forms of knowledge is the admission of a 
false principle of teaching which tends strongly to leave 
a long trail of confusion and even of disaster through the 
succeeding years of school life. The problem now is to 
bring our course of study and our practical teaching into 
conformity with well-understood principles. 

When children in the middle grades meet with these proj- 
ects, these big, practical groupings of Hfe activities, they 
The en- have a new and larger kind of object lesson 

larged ob- . . 

ject lesson with which to deal. The old conceptions of sen- 
sory training in primary grades, of object lessons, are 
wholly inadequate. The children are now to engage in 
making larger assemblages of facts and in grouping them 
into stable, objective units of thought. These big units are 
to be something new and distinctive in the child's progress. 
Both he and his teacher will have to gather up their forces 
for a new and stronger kind of effort in mental, constructive 
picturing, namely, the descriptive concreting of these big 
units to the child's thought. This is why we talk about 
larger units of study in intermediate grades. By this 
we mean not some broad concept which is abstract and 
formidable to the child's mind. Indeed we mean just the 
opposite of this — namely, something tangible and objec- 
tive, something on a simple, big, corporeal scale, a group- 
ing and organization of facts and forces into an outstand- 
ing, objective whole. These larger commanding thought 
structures at which we aim in the middle grades, we call 
larger object lessons or main projects as tangible units of 
study. The Ufe of Columbus, for example, centered around 
his one great shaping idea and organized into a developing 
unit of eSort, illustrates such a knowledge whole. It 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 75 

projects itself also into the future, for his idea keeps on 
developing in the lives and exploits of other men, like 
Da Gama, Magellan, and later navigators. These projects 
grow still larger as we advance into the grammar grades. 
The planning and building of the Panama Canal is illus- 
trative; the Salt River Project in irrigation, the growing 
harbor in New York City with its shipping, docks, and busy 
activities are further examples. 

The teachers in the intermediate schools should be led 
into a new art of constructing and using these big units 
of study. It is not strange that our teachers in middle 
and grammar grades have not yet gained much skill in 
this fresh art of concreting and building up the larger 
object lessons. It requires an unusual abundance of fruit- 
ful, realistic knowledge and the art of putting together 
and building up these source materials into connected and 
well-compacted wholes. They have nowhere had much 
practice in this kind of study and organization. Besides, 
our leaders in educational thought have not yet taken the 
time and trouble to show us how to do this. They have 
been busy with other things and the task is not an easy one. 
This opens up at least a new and very important field of 
practical educational effort. 

One reason for building up around these projects as cen- 
ters such an elaborate and stable thought structure is that 
as big, tangible units of knowledge they are the appropriate 
and necessary beginnings of important thought movements 
to be continued through several years. They set in motion 
strong thought forces that are to go on growing and or- 
ganizing the best knowledge materials in these grades as 
a necessary prelude for those which follow. We desire to 
get started right in our knowledge program at this critical 



76 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

point. We wish to lay strong foundations upon which 
all the later structure of knowledge can rest. For this is a 
very decisive and critical point in the course of study. If 
we start with the wrong kind of topics and a wrong method 
in the third and fourth grades, it will have a depressing and 
almost fatal influence for several years if not for life. 

Teachers in the intermediate grades have a chance to 
perform a unique service for the whole plan and process of 
education by making the appropriate transition 
service for from the simple illustrative objects and devices 
the middle ^f ^-j^e primary grades to the larger constructive, 
objective interpretations revealed in these big, 
tangible projects and enterprises of intermediate grades. 
These large topics are the gateways through which the 
children may freely enter into the domain of world knowl- 
edge. Let them be beautiful and artistic in structure, at 
least not forbidding and discouraging. At this critical 
point, where children's minds should expand to take in 
large, tangible problems and dominant interests of the right 
sort, we may spoil the whole prospect for years to come by 
introducing vague, smooth-phrased concepts or deceptive 
general notions, and by imposing upon children a long series 
of dry, trite generalities. Unfortunately this is what we 
are really doing. Examine the textbooks and then go 
into the schools and see. 

One important argument for big units of study in the 
middle grades is the advantage of massing effective knowl- 
edge at the strategic points, of concentrating the illustra- 
tive resources strongly and overwhelmingly at a few big 
centers of thought, so as to break through, as it were, into 
those big thought movements which shape and organize 
the course of study. If we can strike these spots hard 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 77 

enough, we may gain an initial impulse, a headway in our 
thinking and organizing, that will carry us forward into 
the mastery of the controlling concepts of a world-build- 
ing knowledge. This will enable us to master thoroughly 
a few main Hnes of thought. By this we mean the inter- 
pretation of the big projects and enterprises and institu- 
tions through which the important activities in the world 
are being carried on in history, in science, and in geography. 

We wish to make these big object lessons of fourth and 
fifth grade more active and powerful in the interpretation 
of extensive knowledge reserves which the future has in 
store. The knowledge that children are accumulating 
from day to day, if properly organized and clarified, can 
be turned into apperceptive use far more effectively than 
has been the case. In order to gain this result we must 
see to it that our thought-movements through the grades 
are more simple, fundamental, and consecutive. We must 
first select those important centers which naturally hold 
sway over future developments. These centers and active 
interpreters of the world must ground themselves deeply 
in a genuine life setting, before they can start out upon 
their useful career. Each time, in taking up a new subject 
having in it such a strong and far-reaching idea, we should 
make a thorough job of it. We should lay the foundations 
deep and take plenty of time to bring together and group 
in proper relation all the facts and circumstantial data 
that exhibit this driving idea in its natural habitat, its full, 
real environment. Only thus can it function as a strong 
interpreter of later similar situations. 

If we can once get started right in the middle grades 
with a well-arranged series of developing big object lessons 
suitable to the thinking powers of the children, we shall 



78 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

take a long step toward establishing a wise and efficient 
practice in teaching. 

This problem stands forth as a conspicuous landmark 
in the midst of our present educational endeavors and 
experiences. It marks the turning point in the present 
critical stage of our educational evolution. 

The practical world outside of the school has been 
demonstrating a wise use of this big object lesson by giv- 
ing it an influential place in carrying out impor- 
lessons tant enterprises in the iadustrial, scientific, and 

outside the practical world. For instance, a group of 
wealthy capitalists and of influential people 
was strongly interested in persuading the government of 
the United States to estabhsh a large nitrate plant at the 
Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River. In order to bring 
the whole matter prominently before Congress those inter- 
ested employed an artist to paint an extensive pan- 
oramic picture of the Muscle Shoals district. The pur- 
pose was to bring the situation concretely before the Con- 
gressmen, to show the surpassing advantages of this site 
and its possibiHties as a nitrate-producing station. By 
concrete demonstration, followed by full descriptive ex- 
planations, the matter was to be so clearly set forth as to 
convince the authorities and lead them to action. When 
people desire to get results in practical Hfe, they use con- 
vincing arguments in the form of pictures and concrete 
demonstration. This is usually done in the case of adults 
who might be regarded as beyond the need of what are 
called kindergarten methods. 

Again, at the San Francisco Exposition the different 
counties in California and other western states, wishing 
to attract settlers and investors into those districts, set up 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 79 

a series of striking pictures and object lessons. A fruit 
district in Oregon, for example, presented a series of mov- 
ing pictures illustrating the local fruit-growing xhe Ex- 
industry, the clearing and preparation of the position 
land, the planting and spraying of orchards, the irrigation 
ditches at work, the loaded orchard trees, the gather- 
ing and marketing of fruit, the thrifty homes and fine 
schools, the social life of the people, the mountain scenery 
and other local attractions. A lecturer, of fluent speech 
and marvelous statistics of production, explained and 
further elaborated the subjects suggested in the pictures. 
The purpose, of course, was to present an attractive and 
convincing picture of the advantages of buying a fruit farm 
and of settling in this part of the country. 

At the Exposition quite a number of such small audience 
rooms were devoted to these attractive picture shows and 
descriptive lectures. They were remarkably . 
striking exhibits of the resources of the western demonstra- 
and mountain states. Indeed the whole Exposi- *^°^^ 
tion, in its numerous phases, was a collection of beautiful 
and wonderful object lessons. One of those which attracted 
much notice was a complete miniature representation of 
the Panama Canal in which the Gatun Dam, the locks and 
lake, the Culebra Cut and harbor entrances, were reproduced 
and clearly shown in their tropical environment. Iowa, 
as the chief corn state, had a corn palace built up out of 
the ears of corn and decorated with the yellow and other 
grains. Corn production in its most interesting and useful 
aspects was exhibited in curious and artistic ways. The 
school children of San Francisco were regularly taken upon 
visits to the Exposition in classes, and were thus able to 
get the benefit of this remarkable series of object lessons. 



8o TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

It would be difficult to conceive of better demonstrations 
of such lessons for children if they were properly reproduced 
and discussed later in the schoolroom. The International 
Harvester Company has taken advantage of this same idea 
of objectifying its great productive enterprise. It gives 
in pubHc places before schools a series of pictures of the 
wheat industry accompanied by an instructive lecture upon 
the wheat fields, the planting and harvesting scenes, the 
mills and shipments, and the choice loaf of bread as a 
symbol and result of this world process. It is a gigantic 
object lesson which exhibits to the onlooker and listener 
the meaning that Hes behind this vast production and in- 
cidentally advertises these important interests to the world 
of consumers. It doubtless pays, for this kind of instruc- 
tion is strong and effective. 

The entire succession of national expositions of recent 
times, beginning with Philadelphia in 1876 and ending 
with San Francisco in 191 5, has been a series of vast object 
lessons on an imposing scale, and producing important 
and far-reaching results. They have exerted a powerful 
and stimulating influence upon agriculture, mining, manu- 
facturing, architecture, education, electrical invention, 
machinery, transportation, and other great human interests. 

This method of enforcing truth by means of big object 

lessons is in vogue among practical men everywhere in a 

wide variety of situations. In the agricultural 

Object . . . n 1 • 

lessons experiment stations of our state colleges and uni- 
atum- versities, field demonstrations are given in full 

versities ^ ' ° 

detail. Corn and wheat, cotton and tobacco, 
fruits and vegetables are dealt with as problems under field 
conditions of soil and sunHght and moisture. Long ago 
Benjamin Franklin showed his astuteness by this method. 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 8 1 

Franklin had been trying in his published paper to persuade 
the farmers about Philadelphia to fertilize their lands with 
lime or plaster of Paris. They failed at first to respond, 
so he selected a prominent field by the main road leading 
into Philadelphia, and after spreading on the fertiHzer he 
sowed wheat in prepared furrows and strips so that when 
the wheat came up the farmers could read in large green 
letters : "This field has been plastered." 

It is worth suggesting that we have printed in big letters 
on every textbook page devoted to the dull, abstract treat- 
ment of topics: *' These pages need to be plastered with 
descriptive illustrations." Many of our books need to be 
reconstructed on this plan. 

The Department of Agriculture in Washington publishes 
a pamphlet. No. 364, entitled "A Profitable Cotton 
Farm." It begins with a description of a 
cotton plantation of less than a hundred acres plantation 
which had been worn out by long cultivation ^^^.^^ggg^^ 
without rotation of crops or replenishing the 
waste till it no longer paid for the labor of cultivation. 
Then follows a full descriptive account, with maps, dia- 
grams, and illustrations, of a successful effort to restore 
the soil fertility and build up this farm again to a strong 
paying basis. By deeper plowing, by using rock fertilizers 
and manures, by rotation of crops and careful cultivation, 
by wise seed selection, by raising stock and feeding, by 
prudent marketing and by careful, scientific attention to 
business, this became a very profitable farm investment. 
The plan was worked out during a series of years, and exact 
accounts were kept of the outlay for labor, for fertiHzers, for 
buildings, for stock, for houses and machinery, and for seed. 
Likewise the returns for grain, hay, and stock sold were 



82 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

matter of record. This was a full, objective, practical 
demonstration, under usual farm conditions, of what can 
be done and ought to be done on scores and hundreds of 
such farms. 

The agricultural and engineering departments of our 
state universities are showing us a practical pedagogy 
based on objective demonstration in field and forest, in 
garden and orchard, in dairying, in stock and poultry 
raising, in bee culture, in road and bridge building, and in 
many other Hues of practical Ufe. 

This concrete method of demonstration is a proper 

combination of the scientific with the practical and strangely 

enough has been developed and has proved the 

that works^ best method for educating adults, outside of the 

in the busi- school. In practical life when we undertake to 

ness world , ^ 

convmce others of the value of miportant proj- 
ects in mines and factories, in industries and important 
schemes on land and sea, we invariably use big, concrete 
object lessons which set forth the facts and processes and 
results with unmistakable clearness. This is a kind of 
pedagogy which the world outside of the school has tried 
and found effective to produce results. And yet in the 
schools, with young children having little or no experience, 
we undertake the teaching of these very same subjects, 
as commerce, mining, agriculture, and government, with- 
out any, or at least without adequate, illustration. We as 
school teachers should go out into the world and take 
lessons of practical farmers, business men, and promoters 
of large enterprises in order to learn effective modes of 
instruction. 

The attempt to instruct children at the very beginning 
of such topics by using condensed and abstract statements 



LARGER LESSON PLAN BASED ON PROJECTS 8>^ 

as the principal basis for knowledge is a curious and unac- 
countable misfit in education. An equally curious misfit 
is an occasional effort to impose upon young teachers 
unappHed pedagogical generalities, for it accustoms them 
at the start to a false method of thinking and of teaching. 



CHAPTER V 

THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES PUT TO WORK 
UNDER RIGHT CONDITIONS 

The enlarged object lesson of the preceding chapter 

furnishes a fitting and profitable introduction to knowledge 

in different fields. But it is far more than a 

The first re- pleasant introduction. It has in it also a con- 

quirement ... 

a large structive principle upon which to develop a plan 

whole ^ ^^ teaching. The enlarged object lesson, worked 
out as a developing type, is only another name 
for the complete teaching unit or knowledge-whole, which 
is the basis of classroom method. The first step in the 
improvement of our methods is to furnish such strong, 
well-organized teaching units, which are the proper natural 
embodiment of right teaching principles. Until our course 
of study is made up of such selected and developed knowl- 
edge units, our teachers are at a loss what to do and the 
principles of teaching do not find appropriate material 
to work upon. 

The three principles mainly dealt with in the present 
chapter have been matters of long discussion among teach- 
ers and writers and are now clearly understood. 

Three fa- , . -^ 

miUar How to tum them into active use and make them 

pnncipes effective in school lessons is the main concern. 
On the basis of the enlarged object lesson or teaching unit 
worked out to its final results, we shall now attempt a dis- 

84 



THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES 85 

cussion of three principles. The first is the process of 
combining inductive and deductive thinking in the devel- 
opnaent of essential truths. The second is apperception or 
the interpretative use of acquired knowledge as a means 
of assimilating new and kindred topics. The third is self- 
activity in the independent and reflective use of knowledge 
in solving new problems and in organizing the field of 
knowledge progressively. 

First, in the elaborate treatment of our large teaching 
units or type studies, such as the Virginia Plantation in 
history, we magnify the principal stages of the 
inductive-deductive thought-movement. To be- tive-deduc- 
gin with, the concrete, descriptive stage is ^vepro- 
greatly enlarged by a full exposition of the strik- 
ing features of a single tobacco plantation. Following 
this a series of comparisons with other plantations in the 
cotton, rice, and sugar-producing states is presented till 
the plantation idea has reached its full scope. Finally, 
the application of this southern idea to other regions and 
to the whole industrial, social, and political life of the time 
is made. In such topics we find the main aspects of in- 
ductive-deductive teaching strongly stressed. Instead of 
a curtailment of these phases, there is an expansion and 
almost dramatic staging of the main steps. When children 
are deahng with important and sometimes difficult subjects 
for the first time, such dramatic exhibition is needed. The 
extended and elaborate treatment of topics is peculiarly 
appropriate to the mental needs of beginners. 

A type study, such as the Salt River Project in irrigation, 
expanded into a complete monograph, maps out on a big 
scale (of miles rather than inches) the processes of induc- 
tion and deduction. For example, the comparisons of the 



86 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Salt River Project with the Rio Grande Project at Elephant 
Butte stand out with conspicuous features. These might 
be called object lessons in the thought processes. 

In contrast to this the more or less prevalent plan in 
the introductory texts used in middle grades of presenting 
condensed or abstract statements to children, 
vioiatiorTof 2,s a beginning treatment of important topics, is 
these 2i direct and flagrant violation of sound inductive 

teaching, and is an equally wrong method of 
using deduction. The fact that general truths are easy and 
intelHgible to teachers as the matured results of long study 
and experience is no excuse. These definitions or con- 
densed summaries are vague and difficult and disappointing 
to children. They put an artificial obstruction in the 
pathway of the child's thinking. They almost blindfold 
the child at the start. The rank deductive method cancels 
the natural process by which conclusions are reached, 
makes the child's learning needlessly obscure and difficult, 
and robs him of a keen insight into meanings and values. 

This dogmatic and arbitrary imposition of unsupported 
conclusions upon a child's mind not only corrupts the 
sources of knowledge but it also blocks the way 
i""^^ T"h ^^ ^ proper development of the same topics in 
ject lesson their later stages. Knowledge should be a con- 
stage ^* tinuous advancement of main courses of thought 
through a developing series of kindred topics, 
for example, a series of kindred types in canal projects. 
This progress gives the proper interplay between inductive 
and deductive modes of thinking. Ideas, like trees, should 
grow and expand from year vto year. But if the young 
tree is mutilated or stunted in its early growth, its later 
proper development is spoiled. It is of the first importaQce 



THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES 87 

to start out right in the intermediate grades with the strong, 
healthy, full growth of a few main ideas which may expand 
later to their natural, mature meaning. The enlarged 
object lesson, built up upon sensory materials with the 
aid of the constructive imagination, as a first full, concrete 
expression of an important organizing idea, furnishes the 
first stage of successful inductive-deductive teaching. It 
is the appropriate measuring unit upon which we can size 
up and standardize later knowledge materials and modes 
of instruction in this part of the course. The deductive 
process in the development of thought is just as essential 
as the inductive, and there is a constant interplay between 
the two. The mistake so often made in teaching is that 
of forcing abstract thought too early, before the concrete 
illustrations have been clearly given, upon which, as a 
basis, a safe deductive apphcation can be made to other 
cases. This premature effort at both inductive and deduc- 
tive thinking leads to those misfortunes which are sure to 
follow when we adopt the too common practice of early 
dogmatizing and of dictating to children the main concepts 
as ready-made conclusions for their acceptance. 

Secondly, the principle of apperception is a sharp test 
of the working value of knowledge, of its real utility. To 
apperceive a new subject is to apply old knowl- Appercep- 
edge to its right interpretation. A totally new *^®° 
subject like the Chinese language, which has in it no familiar 
elements, is extremely difficult to learn because it finds 
no points of contact in our previous knowledge, nothing to 
hook on to. French, on the contrary, to one familiar with 
English and Latin, is easy because so many words are simi- 
lar in form and meaning to the EngHsh and Latin. One of 
the chief economies in education is to see to it that the 



88 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

mind is early and richly stored with those types of knowl- 
edge that interpret or apperceive on a broad scale. This 
is the clear and express embodiment of a potent idea, a 
real t3^e, for example, the First Steamboat on the Ohio. 
This idea thoroughly understood is ready to serve as a 
keen interpretative factor in a multitude of future impor- 
tant navigation problems. The whole purpose of such a 
large object lesson is to set forth one single idea in a clear 
light, with its full surroundings and in its whole meaning. 
There is nothing vague or uncertain about the steamboat 
idea because the meaning is brought out unmistakably 
by a full, concrete setting. By comparing this idea of steam 
power on rivers in its concrete manifestation with other 
similar situations on lakes and oceans, the child's thinking 
becomes quick and flexible in applying its purport to a 
variety of life conditions. Thus the apperceptive power 
of an idea grows steadily stronger and keener. This inten- 
sive treatment of a single important idea, its concrete en- 
largement and its sharp illumination from every point of 
view, turning it into use in a variety of ways, 
assimUation Until it grows into a ready habit of mterpret- 
and use of j^g ^g^ situations — all this is a marked em- 

knowledge *^ , 

phasis of the practical-use side of knowledge. 
This is precisely what is meant by apperception. The 
first steamboat idea, developed into a full understanding 
of the great era of steamboat navigation on the Mississippi 
and western rivers, has a wide-reaching interpretative 
value. It quickly explains the growth of lake traffic. 
It expands to the meaning of seaboard and ocean trade 
and develops step by step into a world idea which is 
even now opening up into a still greater future for world 
trade. 



THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES 89 

The extreme value of this principle and of this method 
in building up early a body of keen, active knowledge 
which will be serviceable in later studies cannot continuous 
be overestimated. In this fundamental apper- organization 
ceptive process of organizing knowledge we find out that 
a few basal ideas embodied in strong object lessons are the 
organizers of a course of study, and they continue to develop 
and grow stronger as apperceiving centers through the 
whole curriculum. By setting up these strong, conspicuous 
object lessons early, on a large scale for the middle grades, 
we are laying the sure foundations for a stable knowledge 
structure and for a rapid advance in similar future studies. 
Having thoroughly mastered a group of these strong, prac- 
tical ideas in the -middle grades, the children are prepared 
to move rapidly to the conquest of new but kindred lessons. 
The grammar grades will simply offer a further develop- 
ment of these same ideas expanding under new conditions. 

This essential continuity of thought, beginning strongly 
in big topics in the middle grades, is marked in history. 
It is seen in the four hundred years of westward continuity 
expansion, illustrated by the Trip to California i^iiustory 
in ^4g, in the strengthening principle of self-government, 
typified first in the town meeting, in the expansion of the 
representative system ; in the improvement and extension 
of commercial routes, in short, in all the big topics, like 
slavery, emigration, tariff legislation, and the growth of 
cities. The Purchase of Louisiana, as a t3^e study, shows 
in one conspicuous illustration the active principle of west- 
ward expansion which then interprets a whole chain of 
very important similar events running through our national 
history for three hundred years. 

The thorough mastery of one stage in the growth of such 



90 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

a history topic furnishes the apperceptive material for a 
rapid, conquering advance through earHer and later stages. 
The fact that our history studies have failed to show up 
clearly this natural, sequential development of ideas is 
proof adequate of the bhghting effect of a dogmatic, abbre- 
viated mode of teaching. This latter method starts out 
with vague, blurred ideas and depends mainly upon a 
rigid memory process of learning dictated, somewhat 
detached, statements. This arbitrary process results in a 
collection of facts and stereotyped sentences of a fixed 
and static quality. They stand alone, sufficient unto 
themselves, finding too little relation to what precedes 
and follows. Flexibility and continuity of developing 
thought in an apperceiving process, with ready adjustment 
to new situations, are not the earmarks of this one-sided 
mode of study. Purely deductive, dictated teaching is 
not an assimilative, building-up process. 

In like manner, big topics elaborately treated in the 

fourth-grade geography center around a few constructive 

ideas which will carry their interpreting value 

Czsmples , 

strongly mto all the later studies. The com- 
plete clearing up of these fundamental ideas through for- 
cible object lessons at the beginning is a wise precaution. 
Such topics, for example, as a sawmill and lumbering at 
MinneapoHs, a cotton plantation in Georgia, the Hudson 
River, an orange grove in Florida, the harbor of San Fran- 
cisco, the power plant at Niagara, a coal mine in Illinois, 
a salmon fishery in Puget Sound, the construction of jetties 
at the mouth of the Mississippi, — ■ these topics strongly 
developed become keen and swift interpreters of scores of 
kindred lessons later in the course. This concrete enrich- 
ment and full clarification of fundamental ideas at the 



THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES 9I 

start is the wisest economy in the whole teaching process. 
It is the very essence of usefulness in knowledge because 
it puts the whole stress upon that kind of knowledge which 
comes at once and perpetually into use as a keen interpreta- 
tive factor. 

The abstract, formal method in this important respect 
is misleading and fraudulent because it lays the emphasis 
upon a kind of knowledge that will not work, Abortive 
that proves helpless in the pinch of practical use. ^^owiedge 
It is now well known that knowledge gained by such methods 
is weak and useless in power to interpret new subjects. 
This is all too natural because such general truths, unsup- 
ported by facts and illustrations, are vague and indefinite 
in meaning and cannot explain themselves, to say nothing 
of explaining other things. They certainly fail to unravel 
new and complex situations. In grammar, for example, 
it has been demonstrated many times over that a memory 
knowledge of bare rules and principles does not prevent 
mistakes in the use of common English ; not that there is 
anything wrong in rules and principles, but because knowl- 
edge in this abstract form is vague and unreHable when 
demanded for use. The principle of apperception is ex- 
tremely practical and exacting in its demands and it rejects 
as useless and false the vague, generalized knowledge that 
will not function in school needs or in later life's needs. 
Knowledge, on the other hand, that is developed clearly 
out of living examples and is constantly reenforced by 
quick reference to facts of experience conforms fully to the 
sound principle of apperception. 

Let it be remembered that there is no longer a reasonable 
doubt of the correctness and supreme value of this prin- 
ciple of apperception. Knowledge that will not act as 



92 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

apperceptive material in progressive learning is at an 
absolute discount. We are discovering that a large amount 
_, , . of this kind of knowledge, so called, has been 

Emphasis on ^ . 

usable stored up in children's minds as useless junk, 

ow e ge rJ^^ g^^ j..^ ^£ ^j^-g waste and dead wood in study, 

and to put the attentive effort of children upon that kind 
and quality of knowledge that will function most effectually 
in learning new lessons is our present main business. 

Thirdly, another principle of prime importance, and now 
generally accepted as such, is that of self -activity. It 
Self- ^ has been much talked of in theory, but is very 

activity elusive in practice. It is the idea that children 

are to show a free, self-active, and self-determining spirit 
in studies. The big, expanded object lesson is a potent 
device for getting children started right into freedom, inde- 
pendence, and largeness of thought. It is copious in its 
realistic and illustrative materials. It seeks to come at 
a topic expectantly, picturesquely, and with full apprecia- 
tion, to survey it in its manifold relations, to balance it 
up on this side and that. It holds to a focal center and yet 
reaches out in several directions into fruitful inquiries. 
Properly elaborated, it goes down into the roots of the 
main subject getting at basal facts and relations. It 
involves problems and brings to light whole series of 
problems. 

Many of the big topics or t3^e-studies are projects, 
pure and simple, that is, practical enterprises, worked out 
Vital ^s problems under strenuous life conditions, 

problems Every step in the execution of a great project 
like the Panama Canal is an intense and vital problem, 
which can be placed before children as such, and their 
best mental effort can be thrown into the solution of these 



THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES 93 

problems. For example, What were the chief purposes 
in building the Gatun Dam, and how must it be built to 
accomplish these purposes? How could a hydro-electric 
power plant be built at Gatun Spillway, and where could 
it be put to use in the Canal Zone ? The big topics not only 
present these problems clearly, but they also supply the 
facts and data upon which, as a basis, the children are 
enabled to think out a solution. 

Such big, intensive object lessons are rich in thought 
and set the minds of children into free and liberal action 
toward important, self-determining efforts. This 
has been fully demonstrated in such topics as project a 
the planning and working of a gold mine in fr^*edom*° 
Colorado, the building of the Hoosac Tunnel, and self-] 
the Robin Hood stories, the construction and 
voyage of the first steamboat on the Ohio, the overland 
journey to CaHfornia in '49, the problem story of Damon 
and Pythias, equipping for a summer camping season 
in the mountains. It is a strong stimulus to children in 
their early years to furnish them a chance to reach down 
deep into the roots of a few important problem studies. 
They gain the privilege of collecting around central ideas 
the full complement of pertinent knowledge. They arrange 
significant facts upon a strong central problem whose 
solution reaches out to interpret life in many directions. 

The barren, single facts, the algebraic generalities with 
which our primary school texts are sometimes cluttered, 
give a surprisingly narrow limit to a child's thinking. 
They lack stimulus and free scope. They cramp and hinder 
spontaneous movement in what might be a rich, growing 
field of thought. Freedom to think out problems is im- 
possible within such narrow boundaries, just as freedom 



94 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

and flexibility of speech are denied to one who is narrowly 
limited in vocabulary. The first important factor in the 
stimulation of a child's own thought is valuable, realistic, 
and copious knowledge, centering upon some important 
project. The second stage is furnished by a further natural 
expansion of these worthy topics into still larger and richer 
fields of thought. These extensions are found in the big, 
later, kindred topics of the upper grades. The mind grows 
in power with what it feeds on and assimilates. There is 
no place in education where rich and abundant information 
centering at a few points is more appreciated and more 
significant than in these middle and grammar grades, 
where wide-awake children are getting their first full supply 
of palatable mental food. At this critical stage we can 
afford to surprise the children with a few strengthening 
drafts at the full fountain of reaHstic knowledge. For 
once in their lives, and that early, they should experience 
the unstinted bounty of a few overflowing subjects of 
study. ^ 

How can these things come to pass in a plan of instruc- 
tion based upon narrow, dogmatic thought processes with 
a shallow and meager content ? The setting and 
Narrow, solution of problems in projects is the standard 

dogmatic ^ , ^ r- j 

processes form of Self -activity. But at the start, the dog- 
activity^^ ' niatic process gives us the antidote for all this 
problem-work by foretelHng the conclusion of 
the whole matter. The premature solution of every prob- 
lem is given. It anticipates and precludes the thinking 
process which should lead up to this conclusion. It bars 
out seK-activity in thinking and calls for docile memory 
performance. To awaken self-activity in children, we 
must give them more to think about, a wide range of valu- 



THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES 95 

able facts and ideas, and greater freedom in a full field of 
knowledge. A predetermined, cut-and-dried process of 
learning which leads to certain dictated formulas forbids 
self-activity. But the natural full growth of purposeful 
ideas leads to a dynamic expansion of thought which must 
take its own course and is not always predictable. This 
growth points to a profitable evolution of thought into new 
phases, allowing a free mind opportunity to blaze its own 
pioneer way. 

The principle of self -activity would imply that the entire 
self and the real self is brought into full action. In com- 
plete self-activity the whole force of one^s nature is appealed 
to and set in motion in untrammeled, spontaneous effort. 
When properly directed upon worthy projects, this complete 
exertion of the self is the highest kind of training and of 
living. Two main elements of this kind of self-activity 
have been strongly emphasized in our recent educational 
discussions, — • interest and effort. 

Interest is the ready, delighted response of the soul to 
those phenomena or experiences in nature and in human 
Hfe which appeal to it as valuable and worthy, interest and 
They hold our interest and attention as valuable ®^°^ 
in their own right. Voluntary effort is the impulse of 
the soul to express itself and maintain itself, to subdue 
and appropriate the forces about it and make them subject 
to the self. It is the struggle to gain the ends of life against 
opposition and difficulty. Interest in projects and achieve- 
ments measures and determines their values, and effort seeks 
to realize these values, to bring them into full possession. 

Accordingly the objects and undertakings one is strongly 
and permanently interested in are the expression of one's 
real character. On this basis, also, the things one is deter- 



96 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

mined to gain and to hold by effort are the expression of 
strength and unity of Kfe. ; 

r In laying out a plan of instruction, we should provide 
for a full measure of this self-activity grounded upon a 
strong union of interest with voluntary effort. To satisfy 
these conditions we must have a course of study full of 
valuable knowledge and abounding in true projects which 
appeal to the self as worth while. Every subject broached 
should be Hke the opening up and exploitation of a gold 
mine. It should challenge the self to the strongest reaction 
for self-realization. The type-study projects are selected 
and organized into practical units of knowledge which are 
designed to combine these best elements of strength. They 
really grow out of Hfe situations and circumstances as 
necessary problems which challenge the thinker to his best 
reflective and constructive effort. 

The type-study projects already worked out as tentative 
efforts to realize this purpose may be fairly judged on the 
basis of these principles. The Salt River Project, the 
Virginia Plantation, the Peter Cooper story, the Panama 
Canal, and the Muscle Shoals Project are definite efforts 
to organize suitable knowledge for regular classroom use. 
Our conclusion is that these three principles — induction, 
apperception, and self -activity — fail to function in all sub- 
jects which exhibit a feeble and shallow knowledge. There 
are three kinds of so-called knowledge in which these three 
principles find no footing, no ground on which to work, 
(i) vague and abstract knowledge, (2) miscellaneous or 
unorganized knowledge, (3) mere static, catalogued material. 
Unfortunately these are the prevailing forms of knowledge 
found in many of our textbooks, notably in intermediate 
and grammar grades. 



THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES 97 

Before we can get these three principles into use we must 
change the knowledge diet offered to the children. We 
must organize abundant, concrete knowledge around a 
few developing, purposive thought-centers. We must 
gather together the intensive, vital experiences that give 
a genuine enrichment and adequate unfolding to every 
real project that is brought before the attention of children. 
This conclusion is so simple and evident that we would 
be ashamed to state it were it not so constantly overlooked 
and neglected. 

References 

In the Series of Type Studies and Lesson Plans published 
at George Peabody College the following are given in pam- 
phlet form: 

The Salt River Project. 

The Virginia Plantation. 

Peter Cooper and George Peabody. 

The Panama Canal. 

The Muscle Shoals. 



CHAPTER VI 

A GROWING TENDENCY TO ADOPT LARGE PROJECTS 

AS STUDY UNITS 

Illustrated by the Erie Canal Prop:ct 

Among students and teachers there seems to be a grow- 
ing tendency to select from each study a few big teaching 
units, to emphasize these as centers for the organization 
of knowledge, and to neglect minor subjects and mere facts. 
We are engaged in a knowledge-sifting process, a reflective 
weighing of relative values, for the purpose of discovering 
the things of chief importance. 

This tendency to centralize and enrich instruction at a 

few main points is showing itself in a variety of ways. For 

a period of twenty or thirty years, in teaching 

wholes as reading and literature in the grades, the minds 

centers of ^f teachers have been convererinsf more and more 

study ^ ^ 

upon a few of the longer classics as chief centers 
of study, for example. The Courtship of Miles Standish, 
Robinson Crusoe, The Merchant of Venice, Rip Van Winkle, 
The King of the Golden River, The Great Stone Face, Dickens's 
Christmas Carol, The Pied Piper of Eamelin, Treasure 
Island, etc. Each of these is an elaborately developed 
whole, an enriched and standard unit of thought, a project. 
Properly taught, it produces a cumulative, impressive 
educational influence. The Christmas Carol is read through 
as a whole and develops into a series of lessons enforcing a 
central idea. 

98 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE . PRO JECTS 99 

In literature, therefore, teachers have formed the habit 
of centering attention upon important Hterary wholes, 
spending a month or even a whole term upon the elaborate 
study of a single poem or story. Around this piece they 
then group other kindred stories and poems, leading to a 
still stronger comprehensive organization of knowledge 
materials. Instead of fragments of poems and choice 
extracts we select a simple poem Hke the Building of the 
Ship, and the main idea elaborated in this becomes the 
focal center upon which to group other poems and prose 
selections, such as My Captain, The Star-Spangled Banner, 
Webster's Speeches on the Union, and the Lincoln 
Inaugurals. 

The master minds in literature everywhere show this 

marked propensity to gather together and frame up their 

thoughts into these units of constructive art, 

which we call masterpieces and even projects. Literature 

^ ^ •' supplies the 

Teachers are waking to the discovery that in master- 

these finished products of great minds are re- teacWngart 
vealed also the masterpieces of the best teaching 
art ; because master minds, working at their best, instinc- 
tively hit upon the choicest mode of developing, organizing, 
and expressing great thoughts. All important thought 
studies should reap the benefit of this discovery, namely, 
that classic stories and poems are the best models we have 
of big, well-organized units of study. The Hterature we 
use in schools deals only with noble themes. Other studies 
should deal with nothing less than big thoughts. The 
minor, fragmentary, inconsequential facts and triviaHties 
of knowledge should be banished from the school. In 
every study there are a few life centers and they should 
be found out and made the most of. 



lOO TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

The opposite extremes to the ideal forms of literature 

are the realistic products of the manual arts. They are 

also large units of thought. They, too, now 

Complete stand out as complete units of construction, 

units of con- ^ ^ ' 

stniction in not as bits and fragments as formerly. The 
t^^manua Q]3Jg(.^g Constructed now by children in the shops 

are complete projects or units of effort, requir- 
ing a well-thought-out series of mental and physical ac- 
tivities, extending through days and weeks of continuous 
effort and ending in a complete, finished, and serviceable 
project; such objects, for example, as a table, a chair, a 
bird house, a complete woven fabric, or a bound volume. 
Not many such products can be wrought out by each child. 
In the process of thinking out a complete design of a 
table, for example, and in the later careful execution of 
the constructive processes, a boy has carried through his 
thought and motor effort to a complete achievement. 
These well-thought-out and well-executed projects may be 
called, in a limited sense, masterpieces of design and con- 
struction. Such finished units of construction are objective 
demonstrations of the big unit idea in studies. 

The household arts, also, and the school and home garden 
(not to say agriculture), are demonstrating to the world 
the value of complete enterprises, entire projects, as a 
sound basis for school exercises. (See Chapter I.) 

The report of the Committee of Eight of the National 
Historical Society on the course of study in elementary 

history is a pronounced effort to reduce the num- 
mittee of her of topics for each year, to omit minor facts 
Eight on ^^^ statements, and to gain time for a fuller 

treatment of main topics. This report stands 
out as a landmark in the improvement of history instruction. 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS lOI 

There is also a growing and powerful tendency to apply 
the big-unit idea to geography study. Outstanding geo- 
graphical types are set forth with descriptive projects in 
fullness, as, the Mississippi River, the Building geography 
of the Union Pacific Railroad, the Panama Canal, the 
Steel Industry at Pittsburgh, Niagara Falls, the Sahara 
Desert, the Growth of Chicago, Shipbuilding at Glasgow, 
the Gulf Stream, the Alps, etc. We are now beginning to 
see clearly that these are big, objective units, wide-reaching 
in their organizing relations and world-extensive in their 
typical quaHties. The confused complex of geographical 
information is cleared up and simplified by a proper exhibit 
of these big units of study. 

In nature study and applied science big units or type 
studies are coming into vogue, for example, the respiratory 
system, the life history of the thousand-year Types in 
pine, planning the school and home garden, science 
growth of the corn plant, Mt. Shasta in its growth and 
decadence, a forest reserve and forest conservation, the 
history and uses of the steam engine. Such topics have a 
broad scope and a world-building importance. 

In these various fundamental thought studies appropriate 
names have come into use which express the outstanding 
importance of such large units of study. In ^ 

^ ^ ° , . -^ Tennsused 

uterature the term masterpiece is apphed to a to express 
story or poem. In geography we speak of physio- ^"^® ^^*^ 
graphic types, as a desert, or plateau, or river valley, or 
glacier. We deal with striking phenomena, as a cyclonic 
storm, or an earthquake or flood. In commercial geography 
we describe big projects, such as canals and railroad sys- 
tems, or huge manufacturing and industrial plants. In 
history it is the biography of a great man, the rebuilding of 



I02 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

a city, a military campaign, the founding of a state, the 
growth of an institution, or some invention or far-reaching 
discovery in sanitation that is dealt with. In EngHsh studies 
a theme for composition is a basis for gathering and organiz- 
ing knowledge materials. In all these cases the mind 
seeks to grasp a whole, to organize simply great masses of 
knowledge framed up into big, dominant concepts. This 
is the child's and the student's simple method of escaping 
from confusion and chaos and of building up an orderly 
world. 

An examination of more recent textbooks in geography 
and history proves that authors have begun to grasp this 

idea of large units of study. Many recent texts 
Thetransi- exhibit a tendency to select the big topics and 
smauto to give them an enlarged treatment. This is 
iS^s b^un plainly a reaction against one of the striking 

faults of schoolbooks, namely, a short, condensed 
treatment of many topics. Sometimes a mere sentence or 
short paragraph attempts to express the meaning of some 
large concept and that in language so general and abstract 
as to be almost meaningless. A radical change has begun 
and it will hardly stop before the course of study and the 
textbooks have been transformed in the interest of an 
enlarged and enriched treatment of a few main topics. 

A good illustration of this change toward greater respect 
for big units of study may be cited in the treatment of the 

Erie Canal. By comparing a succession of his- 
Canal iUus- tory textbooks published during the last thirty 
trates this years we find either the omission of this topic or 

cnange •' . • j 

its very brief treatment in the earlier books, and 
in notable contrast to this a gradually enlarging discussion 
of this subject in later books. 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS 103 

Out of a dozen history texts examined, four of the earKer 
books made no mention of the Erie Canal. Evidently 
the authors had not discovered that this was an important 
topic. One of the earlier books has the following state- 
ment: "181 7 Erie Canal from Albany to Buffalo begun." 
Another text has this statement: "In 1815 New York 
began the Erie Canal which was completed in 1825." A 
somewhat fuller statement from a third book runs as 
follows: "Public improvements — the greatest of these 
works then in progress was the Erie Canal which connects 
the waters of Lake Erie with the Hudson River and the 
grain fields of the West with the markets of Europe. It 
was formally opened in October, 1825, when the Governor 
of New York and many guests sailed from Buffalo to the 
city of New York in a state barge attended by music and 
the roar of cannon." A fourth and later book contains 
the following account : 

The Erie Canal 

"The Erie Canal connecting the waters of the Great 
Lakes with the Atlantic was completed in 1825. The canal 
passes from Lake Erie to the Hudson at a point near Al- 
bany. It was constructed by the state of New York, 
eight years being required for the work. The success of 
this great undertaking was mainly due to the untiring 
efforts of Gov. De Witt CHnton. 

"The canal brought N. Y. City in close touch with the 
West and its benefits were immediately felt. The cheapening 
of freight rates made a marvelous increase in the amount of 
products exchanged between the East and the West. The 
canal became also a popular route for the emigrant as it was 
an easier way than the overland route of reaching the West." 



I04 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

This paragraph brings out several important results 
from the building of the canal and furnishes considerable 
food for thought. A fifth book quoted gives the following : 

I The Opening of the Erie Canal, 1825 

"John Quincy Adams was the sixth President we elected. 
We have seen that the people living in the eastern states 
had a great desire to open up ways for reaching the country 
west of the Allegheny Mountains. The construction of 
the National Road did much to help them but the state of 
New York resolved to dig a canal reaching from the Hud- 
son River to Lake Erie. 

"In some ways this would be far better than a road, 
because it is always easier and cheaper to carry passengers 
and freight by water than by land. 

"Gangs of laborers began to dig at Albany. After eight 
years of hard work the last shovelful of earth was thrown 
out, and the long ditch was completed, 1825. It ended 
at Buffalo, three hundred and sixty miles west of the Hud- 
son. The canal was the greatest piece of work of the 
kind that had ever been done in the United States. 

"People could now start from New York City by steam- 
boat, go to Albany, step on board of a canal boat, and in 
less than a week they would arrive at Buffalo. That was 
quick traveling for those days. Then, if they liked, they 
could take a steamboat on Lake Erie and go to Cleveland, 
Ohio, or to Detroit, Michigan, or even as far west as Wis- 
consin — and that was then thought to be very far west 
indeed. 

"Thousands of emigrants went west by the canal. A 
part of them pushed on beyond Buffalo and settled in the 
states which border on the Great Lakes. But many of 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS I05 

them stopped at different places in New York. They 
built up the cities of Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buf- 
falo, besides many smaller towns along the banks of the 
canal. 

*'The canal brought wheat and farm produce from the 
West to the East, and it helped in many ways to make 
New York the ^Empire State' — that is, the greatest 
state in population and wealth in the Union." 

This treatment is fuller and more interesting and suggests 
a comparison with the Old National Road. It takes a 
much broader view of the geographical and commercial 
relations of the Erie Canal, of products shipped, and of 
emigration. It suggests a somewhat full geographical study 
of the whole situation. 

A still more recent history textbook is quoted as fol- 
lows: 

"The Erie Canal; the Pennsylvania Canal. — But 
an event of far greater importance than the extension of 
the National Road was the completing and opening of the 
Erie Canal in 1825. We learned (p. 208) that the effect 
of the steamboat navigation in the West was to build up 
the Gulf trade. The Ohio farmer could ship his grain by 
water to New Orleans, and receive a price sufficient to pay 
the freight and still leave a fair profit; but if he should 
send it by land over the mountains to the Atlantic seaboard, 
the cost of transportation would be more, perhaps, than 
the grain was worth. So it was as natural for the Western 
trade to find its way to the Gulf ports as it was for water 
to run down hill. But the business men of New York, 
Philadelphia, and Baltimore saw that they would suffer 
great loss if the Western trade were allowed to slip away 
from them. The National Road, to be sure, would save to 



I06 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

the East a part of that trade ; but, at the best, goods could 
not be moved as cheaply on roads as on rivers. The people 
of the seaboard, therefore, began to look to artificial rivers, 
that is, canals, as a means of securing the Western trade. 

"Canal-building on a large scale began in 1817, when 
De Witt CHnton, governor of New York, turned the first 
spadeful of earth on the Erie Canal, which was to extend 
from Buffalo to Albany, and to connect Lake Erie with 
the Hudson River. CHnton had persuaded the legisla- 
ture of New York to undertake the building of the canal 
at the expense of the state. He promised that the canal 
would draw trade from all the Great Lakes and their tribu- 
taries and from a large part of the Mississippi Valley be- 
sides ; that this trade would find its way down the Hudson 
to New York and cause that city to become a great com- 
mercial center ; that villages, towns, and cities would Hne 
the banks of the canal and the shores of the Hudson from 
Erie to New York ; that ' the wilderness and the soHtary 
place would become glad, and the desert would rejoice, 
and blossom as the rose.' The work of digging the 'great 
ditch' was carried forward in earnest, and in 1825 the 
canal was completed and thrown open to the public. 

"The opening of the canal was celebrated in a manner 
worthy of so great an event. On the 26th of October a 
fleet of gayly decorated boats left Buffalo and moved slowly 
eastward along the canal, ' saluted by music, musketry, 
and the cheers of the crowds along the bank.' On the 
morning of the 4th of November the procession of boats 
reached the city of New York. A flask of water from Lake 
Erie was poured into New York Bay by Governor Clinton, 
and the waters of the Great Lakes were declared to be united 
forever in marriage with the waters of the ocean. 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS 107 

"The canal did all that Clinton promised that it would 
do and even more. Before it was built it cost ^loo to carry 
a ton of goods from Buffalo to New York City ; the canal 
reduced the cost to ^20. The cheap freight rates caused 
trade to flow in great volume toward the canal. Within 
a year after its opening the canal bore on its quiet waters 
many thousands of boats and rafts laden with lumber, 
grain, furs, and merchandise of all kinds. Villages and 
towns sprang up along the Hne of the canal from one 
end to the other. Western New York indeed 'blos- 
somed as the rose.' Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and 
Buffalo rapidly developed into flourishing cities. But 
the greatest thing done by the Erie Canal was to build 
up the trade of New York City and make it the com- 
mercial center of the United States and of the Western 
Hemisphere. 

''The Erie Canal was hardly finished before the State 
of Pennsylvania also began to construct a system of canals 
from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. It was necessary to do 
this if Philadelphia was to hold her Western trade. In 
1826 work on the Pennsylvania was begun, and nine 
years later one could travel by a horse-railway from 
Philadelphia to the town of Columbia on the Susque- 
hanna; thence by a canal along the Susquehanna and 
Juniata to Hollidaysburg ; thence over the mountains by 
a portage railway to Johnstown ; and thence by canal to 
Pittsburgh. 

"Railroads. — It was necessary also for Baltimore to 
have an easy route to the West, but the men of this city 
looked to the railroad rather than to the canal as a means 
of communication. On the Fourth of July, 1828, the 
venerable Charles Carroll of CarroUton, who fifty-two 



Io8 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

years before had signed the Declaration of Independence, 
laid the cornerstone of a railroad that was to connect Balti- 
more and the Ohio River." 

This is the fullest account we have seen in our recent 
histories and it amounts to a fairly elaborate discussion 
of transportation between the Eastern seaboard and the 
great Western regions beyond the AUeghenies and about 
the Great Lakes. 

This treatment gives a larger account of the causes lead- 
ing to the construction of the canal, a fuller detail of the 
actual work, and a clearer statement of the results. But 
it goes beyond this and shows how Pennsylvania worked 
out a similar plan of railroads and canals and how Balti- 
more built a complete railroad to the West. I 

The above extracts, taken from six different histories, 
show a disposition on the part of historians to seize upon an 
important topic and to enlarge upon it more and more. 

The following is suggested as a more nearly adequate 
treatment of this topic, illustrating the organization of 
knowledge around such an important center. The Erie 
Canal has been so important in the historical growth of 
the United States, while its character as a main trafhc 
route is so typical and its relations to the largest railroad 
lines so close, that we deem it a suitable example upon which 
to illustrate the organization of knowledge around a central 
idea on a large scale. The following treatment of the Erie 
Canal, first as a fuller description of a single big engineering 
project, and secondly, as a series of comparisons with other 
waterways and railways connecting the East and the 
West, furnishes a complete illustration of a steady, 
progressive thought development and of a strong central 
organization of a great number of important facts from 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS I09 

the history and geography of the United States. It is a 
good example of what we mean by the big project or unit 
of study. 

The Erie Canal 

The project of building a canal to connect the Great 
Lakes with the Hudson and New York City was thought 
of before the Revolution. But so long as the warlike Iro- 
quois or Six Nations held control of central New York, 
the building of roads and canals across this country was 
out of the question. General Sullivan's army marched 
into the Iroquois country during the Revolution, in 1779, 
and broke up the strong union of the six nations that for 
two centuries had ruled central New York and had been 
feared by all the Indian tribes far and wide. 

At the close of the Revolution, then, white settlers were 
free to push into the valleys, lake regions, and forests of 
central New York as far as Lake Erie. Along the old 
Indian trails from Albany to Lake Erie were now to be laid 
out the wagon roads and later the canals which were to 
connect the East and the West. Even before the Revo- 
lution bold settlers had flocked across the southern Alle- 
ghenies into Tennessee and Kentucky and had taken 
possession of those lands under such leaders as Boone and 
Robertson and George Rogers Clark. A little later 
pioneers drifted into the Ohio country, and now after the 
Revolution there was a growing demand for roads to con- 
nect the western settlements with the older states east of 
the mountains. 

A pioneer road was laid out through the forests and 
swamps of central New York to Lake Erie. The early 
settlers of this rich region soon had supplies of wheat and 



no TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

peltries to send East, that is to New York and Philadelphia, 
and they needed cheap and easy transport. In the spring, 
when the rivers were flooded, they could send boatloads 
of goods down the Susquehanna to Philadelphia and Balti- 
more. The valley of the Mohawk was also used for the 
shipment of goods to New York, partly by boat and partly 
by wagon. The wagon road from Albany to Buffalo was 
a long and tedious haul through woods and swamps, and 
it cost about a hundred dollars to get a ton of freight from 
Buffalo to New York. 

The project of building a canal from Buffalo to Albany 
was early suggested. Gouverneur Morris argued that as 
Lake Erie was 570 feet higher than tidewater at Albany, 
it would be possible to dig a channel and convey a stream 
of water that would carry boats directly to the Hudson. 
De Witt CHnton, afterward governor, was a strong advocate 
of such a canal, and he, with others, had surveys made and 
formed plans. But the undertaking was too difficult 
and expensive for private individuals. 

Only a large state Hke New York could supply the money 
necessary for such an undertaking. Finally De Witt 
Clinton presented the matter to the legislature of New 
York in 181 6. Some of his arguments were as follows: 
Such a canal would greatly cheapen the transport of goods 
from Buffalo to New York. This would make New York 
City the outlet for goods coming from the lakes and the 
Ohio country as well as from central New York, and in 
this way it would rapidly grow into a great city. Again, 
New York State was fortunate in having the only route 
between the East and the West where there were no moun- 
tains to climb, as in Pennsylvania and other states farther 
south. It was the only place where a canal could be built. 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS III 

! 

The shipment of goods down Lake Ontario and the St. 
Lawrence would only injure New York State, and besides, 
the St. Lawrence was blocked with ice during a long winter. 

The country through which the canal would pass was a 
rich and fruitful region, and with a good canal for ship- 
ment it would settle up rapidly and become very prosper- 
ous. The canal itself could be easily supplied with water 
from Lake Erie, and the boating along the canal would 
be much safer, being free from the winds and storms which 
prevail on the lakes and on the ocean. A pair of horses 
or mules could haul a great canal boat loaded with goods 
along the canal at the rate of thirty miles a day, and that 
would be very cheap and rapid compared with any other 
kind of shipping. After much discussion these arguments 
won the day, and the legislature voted to undertake the 
construction of the canal at state expense. 

It was decided that the canal was to be dug along the 
Mohawk Valley, then across New York north of the Finger 
Lakes, not far south of Lake Ontario, to Buffalo. The 
main canal was to be divided into three sections, the western 
part from Lake Erie to the Seneca River, the middle from 
the Seneca River to Rome, and the eastern section from 
Rome to the Hudson at Albany, in all 365 miles. It was 
to be 4 feet in depth, 40 feet wide at the top, and 20 feet 
wide at the bottom. The sloping sides were to be walled 
with stone to prevent washing. 

The first contracts for digging were let in the spring of 
181 7. The farmers along the route had been engaged to 
do the work, at first with spades and wheelbarrows, but 
this was too slow, so scrapers were invented to be used with 
teams and oxen. This made the work go much faster. 
Money was scarce among the farmers and they were 



112 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

glad to engage in the work to get ready money for their 
needs. 

A number of serious difficulties hindered the progress of 
the work. First were the great forests, thick and tangled, 
just west of Rome. Trees must be cut down and stumps 
pulled. The ground was deeply matted with roots. A 
stump puller was sent from England, and a great plow with 
two yoke of oxen was used to loosen up the roots. In some 
places the canal led through swamps, and hundreds of men 
were sick with fever and ague. Thus, for a while, near the 
Seneca River, the work almost stopped. Other stretches 
of the canal had to be quarried out through rock, and 
this was slow and laborious. 

Important rivers like the Genesee had to be crossed, 
and this was a serious problem. Massive stone arches 
were built across the valleys and streams, and stone troughs 
or aqueducts were built upon these, which formed part of 
the canal. The rivers then could pass under these arches 
and aqueducts. 

The canal had to be built at several levels, on account 
of the hilly and sloping nature of the land in places, and 
had to pass from one level to another, say ten feet higher 
or lower. At these places stone locks must be built, with 
double gates at each end, and constructed long enough 
and wide enough to let boats pass into them so as to be 
raised or lowered as the water was let in or out. 

Work was going on in all these sections at the same time. 
As fast as any considerable part of the canal was completed, 
the water was let in, canal boats were built, and goods 
shipped. The charges on these shipments or tolls counted 
up rapidly to a large sum and people began to see that the 
canal, when, finished, would be very profitable. 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS II3 

At last the canal in all its parts was completed in 1825, 
being 365 miles long, and having seventy- two locks and many 
stone aqueducts. It crossed the Mohawk River twice. 
Its entire cost was ^7,600,000, a large sum for those days. 

Of course the completion of the canal was celebrated in 
Buffalo and New York and all the towns and cities between. 
As Governor Clinton and a party of guests entered the 
canal in boats to travel to New York, a cannon was fired 
off, and this shot was followed by a series of cannon dis- 
tributed along the whole route within hearing distance of 
one another. In this way the news was telegraphed to 
New York. All along the route they were received with 
speeches, feasts, and jolHfication, and at New York two 
kegs of water from Lake Erie were poured into the New 
York Bay to signify the union of the lakes with the ocean. 
It was really a great event in American history, as the 
products of the West could find easy transport to New York 
and to Europe by water. Settlers going West could travel 
easily to the states bordering the Great Lakes. 

Important results quickly followed the completion of 
the canal. On the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 
the cost of freighting a ton of goods from Albany to Buffalo 
fell from ^100 to $6 and later to ^3. The whole farming 
country for miles back on both sides of the canal grew 
quickly into a rich, productive region. All along the canal 
cities sprang up which in time have grown into large and 
populous centers of manufacturing. Nearly all the large 
cities of New York State are located on or near this canal 
and the Hudson. Smaller canals were built south and 
north of the Erie connecting it with the lakes and greatly 
increasing the trade. The success of the Erie Canal was 
greater than even its friends had expected. The tolls from 



114 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

1825 to 1834 amounted to eight and a half millions, more 
than the original cost. 

From the Ohio country and from all the Great Lakes 
region, products began to flow in toward Buffalo and along 
the canal to Albany and New York. The Eastern people, 
desiring to move West, found it easy to transport their 
famihes and goods by the canal and lakes to Cleveland, 
Detroit, and Chicago, and to move out to farms in Illinois, 
Indiana, and Michigan. Passenger canal boats were built 
and much used. 

From the opening of the Erie Canal, New York City 
began to grow and soon outdistanced all other cities in 
the United States in wealth and population. For some 
thirty years this canal was the chief highway of traffic for 
heavy goods between the East and the West. It was also 
the chief mode of travel for people and famiHes going be- 
tween the East and the West. During this period the tolls 
on the canal brought in a large revenue to the state. 

Cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore, on the Eastern 
seaboard, were very anxious to share with New York the 
rich commerce of the West. Even before the building of 
the Erie Canal the government of the United States had 
constructed the Old National Road from Cumberland on 
the Potomac, across the mountains and through south- 
western Pennsylvania to Wheeling on the Ohio. This 
road was afterward completed across Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois to St. Louis, and cost the government about ^7,000,- 
000, not much less than the Erie Canal. 

It was a well-built stone road as far as Wheeling, with 
massive stone bridges, and to this day it is a good, soHd 
highway. For many years it was thronged with wagons 
and emigrants and their stock and goods, moving to the 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS II5 

West into the Ohio Valley. The old hostelries or hotels 
along the road are yet fine old landmarks of the day when 
Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln 
traveled over this road by coach to Washington. 

Philadelphia sought to reach the West by still another 
route. Canals were built by the state along the Susque- 
hanna and up the Juniata to the edge of the mountain 
ridge between Johnstown and Altoona. It was intended 
to carry the canal through this mountain wall by a tunnel. 
Another canal on the west side connected Johnstown with 
the Allegheny River and Pittsburgh. But the tunneling 
of the mountain proved too difficult, and a portage rail- 
road was built over the mountain to connect the two canals, 
at state expense. Another railroad was built by the state 
of Pennsylvania from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna, 
and thus Philadelphia was connected, from tidewater on 
the Delaware, by combined raihoads and canals, with the 
Ohio at Pittsburgh. This became a great route of traffic 
between the Ohio country and Philadelphia. It competed 
with the Erie Canal for the trade of the West, 

During this early period we find three great routes 
competing for this Western trade. All of them were very 
important in the development of the West and in bring- 
ing about an easier interchange of products between the 
East and the West. Make a map showing these three 
routes. How did they rank in importance? What cities 
were connected by them? 

Between 1840 and 1850 railroads were projected and 
built across the Alleghenies to assist in handHng the im- 
mense traffic that was growing up and to bring about a 
much quicker and cheaper transit of goods and persons 
over long distances. It was only gradually and slowly 



Il6 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

that engineers and capitalists learned how to build and 
manage railroads. At first they were very crude and 
clumsy. Instead of engines they used horses and mules 
to draw cars, and there were no cross ties connecting the 
two rails. There were no stations or freight houses, no 
regular times for trains to start, no headlights, no sleeping 
cars, no telegraph. 

The New York Central Railroad, at first built in sec- 
tions and afterwards combined into one road, ran parallel 
to the Erie Canal between Albany and Buffalo, and on 
down the Hudson to New York. When this railroad 
connection was completed, goods and persons could be 
transported much more rapidly, and a large share of the 
trade was transferred to the railroad. But so great was 
the volume of trade that both canal and railroad were 
kept busy. Freight rates on the canal were so much 
cheaper for heavy produce that for grain and farm products 
it was much better to use the canal. The cheap rates on 
the canal kept down the railroad freight rates. 

In the early years the canal was so successful that peo- 
ple began talking of enlarging it. By making it deeper 
and wider, larger canal boats could be used and transport 
would be cheaper still. In 1835 it was decided to enlarge 
the canal, making it seventy feet wide at the top and seven 
feet deep, and at the same time larger double locks were 
to be constructed. This was a costly undertaking and its 
working out was not completed until 1862. This great 
improvement cost fifteen millions of dollars, nearly twice 
the original cost of the canal. 

The competition between the canal owned by the state 
and the railroads owned by private companies continued. 
The New York Central built double tracks across the 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS II7 

state and later increased them to four tracks, so vast was 
the volume of business with the West. Other railroads 
across New York to Buffalo, as the Lehigh & Lackawanna, 
were also built, and there was plenty of freight for all. 

Finally, to enable the Erie Canal to compete with the 
railroads for the Western trade, a second and much greater 
rebuilding and enlargement of the canal was talked about. 
The great railroad systems must not be allowed to gain 
a monopoly of trade and fix freight rates. There was 
a hot political campaign in New York State while Roosevelt 
was governor, and at the end it was decided by a large 
majority of the voters of the state to spend one hundred 
million dollars enlarging the Erie Canal. This really meant 
the building of a new and much larger canal. The course 
of the canal was considerably changed, the Mohawk River 
was to be deepened and canalized and pools formed by 
means of locks. The canal is 125 feet wide at the top, 
12 feet in depth, and is able to float barges carrying 
1,000 tons of freight. Great locks are built, large enough 
to pass two of these barges at once. This improvement 
makes the Erie Canal one of the greatest canals in the 
world and not only furnishes a cheap transport of Western 
products by water to the seaboard, but will compel the 
railroads to keep their rates low. 

A comparison of canal building and railroad construction 
across the state of New York, from New York City via 
Albany, Syracuse, and Rochester to Buffalo, with the canals 
and railways from Philadelphia via Harrisburg and Altoona 
to Pittsburgh will bring out the fact that the people of 
New York and Pennsylvania have spent vast sums of 
money in first constructing and in later developing these 
important traffic routes between the Ohio and the Great 



Il8 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Lakes on one side and the Atlantic seaboard cities on the 
other. 

During this early period, also, the people of Maryland 
undertook one of the first great railroad projects in build- 
ing the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad from Baltimore to 
Wheeling, and later to Cincinnati. A canal was also 
constructed along the Potomac from Washington to the 
mountain ridge. At a later time the people of Virginia 
secured a railroad from Norfolk through Richmond across 
the mountains to Charleston, West Virginia, and Cincinnati. 

The people of Massachusetts were as anxious as those of 
other states to secure a full share in the rich traffic of the 
West. They early surveyed the route from Boston to 
Albany for a canal and at state expense undertook the 
digging of the Hoosac Tunnel, five miles in length, through 
the high mountain ridge which stretches across western 
Massachusetts. The canal was afterward given up in 
favor of the Fitchburg Railway which passes through the 
Hoosac Tunnel to Albany. The Hoosac Tunnel cost the 
state seven million dollars, nearly as much as the Erie 
Canal. 

The people of Canada were sorry to see the traffic of 
the Great Lakes region turned down the Hudson by the 
Erie Canal. In order to secure their share of the lake traffic 
the Canadians built the Welland Canal from Lake Erie 
across the peninsula to Lake Ontario, at a cost of fifteen 
million dollars. This canal enabled vessels to pass from 
the lower St. Lawrence to the upper lakes around Niagara 
Falls. It was also necessary to build a canal and locks 
just above Montreal to allow vessels to pass around the 
long rapids in the St. Lawrence. 

All the way from Canada to Virginia the people of 



TENDENCY TOWARD LARGE PROJECTS II9 

America were alike interested in one problem. All these 
big, expensive schemes of canal and road building were 
efforts to solve the problem of cheap transport between 
the East and the West, to connect the waters of the Ohio 
and of the Great Lakes with tidewater and with Europe. 
The rich products of the western plains must be gotten to 
market and the manufactures of the Eastern cities and of 
Europe must be carried to the rich country beyond the 
Alleghenies. 

The great success of the Erie Canal suggested similar 
undertakings connecting the rivers and lakes of the West. 
In 1848 the IlHnois-Michigan Canal was completed, con- 
necting Lake Michigan with the IlHnois and Mississippi 
rivers, and serving as a means of carrying on a large 
traffic. Several canals were built across Ohio and Indiana 
connecting the Ohio River with Lake Erie. 

In recent years a project for a deep water route by way 
of the Chicago Drainage Canal and the IlHnois River to 
St. Louis and the Gulf has been seriously proposed. The 
deepening of the Upper Mississippi from St. Paul, of the 
Ohio from Pittsburgh, and of the Missouri from Omaha 
has been proposed as a part of this great system of deep 
water navigation. The completion of the Panama Canal 
has opened up a prospect for turning the commerce of the 
West down the Mississippi to New Orleans and thence by 
way of the Panama Canal to distribute it to the countries 
surrounding the Pacific Ocean. 

The Panama Canal seems, in a sense, a means of compet- 
ing with the Erie Canal for the traffic and products of the 
Mississippi Valley. The products of the Mississippi 
Valley would naturally flow southward to find their outlet 
to the world. In the early pioneer days before roads 



I20 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

were constructed across the AUeghenies, these products 
were sent down the Mississippi to New Orleans. The 
Illinois Central Railroad is now again carrying on a large 
traffic between the North and the South, and other impor- 
tant roads have developed a similar trade. The future is 
likely to see a great increase in the North and South traffic 
in staple products. The fruits, vegetables, rice, cotton, 
and sugar of the South will move northward and the grains, 
meats, and machinery of the North will move southward. 

Conclusions 

The following conclusions may be drawn reasonably 
from the foregoing illustrations and discussions : 

1. There is a strong and growing tendency to select and 
develop large teaching units, as illustrated by big projects 
or type studies. 

2. The more important the unit of study the stronger 
is the impulse to expand it to a full and adequate treat- 
ment. 

3. These large, well-organized knowledge-units become 
first-class teaching projects and give a sound basis for 
complete class instruction. 



CHAPTER VII 

SIMPLIFYING STUDIES ON THE BASIS OF LARGE 

PROJECTS 

How to get at the simple basis of knowledge, how to 
master its main elements without waste and confusion, is 
surely a vital question. We wish to discover a sound basis 
for simplification of studies. The simplicity of knowledge 
seems to come into view in its big, central ideas and projects. 
The key to the situation may be had if we can find the strate- 
gic centers in school studies. The projects discussed in 
Chapter I are large, important units of study. As such 
they are a good substitute for our present miscellaneous 
collections of knowledge and are the chief basis for reor- 
ganizing our plans of instruction in the interest of sim- 
plicity. 

The increasing number and complexity of studies in 
the curriculum have had a more or less confusing effect. 
We have been adding new studies and changing ^^ 

The present 

old courses at such a rate as to throw the ma- confusion in 
chinery of instruction into disorder. There is ^*^ ^^^ 
too much crowding and congestion in the knowledge pro- 
gram. Learning as displayed in the various studies is 
also dribbled out too much in small bits and fragments. 
Facts and ideas that ought to fit together and combine 
into larger units fall into broken and disconnected parts. 
Such scattered items and fragments of information are 
disappointing because of their failure to give the larger 

121 



122 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

surveys of knowledge and the deeper insight into important 
subjects, the real simplicity of knowledge. 

The school program should require a small number of 

big units well organized rather than a large number of 

small topics scattered and disconnected. A 

as^sembiing clear setting forth of the strong, developing fea- 

and organiz- tures of one big city Hke New York, in its local 

ing facts ° -^ ' 

and world relations, followed by detailed com- 
parisons with other leading cities, is more instructive than 
the mere names and location of hundreds of towns and 
cities scattered through forty-eight different states. It is 
needful thus to focus attention upon the conspicuous 
centers where facts and forces group and organize them- 
selves and display their influence in a simple, almost spec- 
tacular way. Mere facts in any study, not grouped and 
related to any strong, replete center of thought, are well- 
nigh meaningless and worthless. They should be left in 
the junk heap and not imposed upon children as knowl- 
edge. The ragpicker and garbage collector have a true 
function, not so the student who is collecting odds and 
ends which, as unrelated fragments, lead to no important 
conclusions. 

Our schools have been forced into this small business of 
deahng with numerous fragments and disconnected facts 

by a somewhat rapid and disorderly accumula- 
The simple ^[q^i of Studies and by compressing a great variety 
knowledge of knowledge into a small space. Our recent cur- 
sight^of riculum has been deluged by a varied mixture 

of unordered materials. Both teachers and chil- 
dren have been thrown into such a mess of knowledges 
that we have almost lost the notion that there is any 
simple principle of organization. 



A BASIS FOR SIMPLIFYING STUDIES 1 23 

The child is out on a voyage of discovery and explora- 
tion in a universe of new things. He has some eight years 
(from six to fourteen) to circumnavigate this 
earth and to return home laden with world ex- knowledge 
perience. The seemingly detached and scat- a^^opeiess 
tered facts surrounding a child are infinite in 
number and variety. If education consists in memorizing 
as many as possible of these mere bits and parcels the child 
has a tedious and hopeless task. He is going into a laby- 
rinth from which he will never emerge into daylight. The 
fundamental, the simple, is above all things necessary. 
The field of knowledge, taken as a whole, is vast and limit- 
less. Quantitatively measured the amount of information 
gathered by any child must be extremely small, a mere 
fragment of the whole. It is therefore of the utmost im- 
portance that we be highly selective in the few important 
things we require of children. Only the best, the most 
necessary and typical, should be thought of. 

We take it for granted that it is the purpose of education 
to let the child into the secret of the world system, to give 
him a prompt and far-reaching interpretation of 
the orderly world, to make big discoveries and chUdren 
to make them rapidly. He has no time to waste f^°^l^^ 
in learning naked, lonesome, meaningless facts. 
He should travel a road that leads to important places, 
to real knowledge of the few essentials. The child has 
a right to know this world and to understand it. It is a 
new, complex, bewildering world and if he gets muddled and 
discouraged in his approaches to it, confusion becomes worse 
confounded. We are guiding the children in the search for 
these simple approaches to world knowledge, hoping to 
reach and travel with them the main highways of thought. 



124 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

The child, too, has in his brain a machinery of thought 
with which to make these discoveries. But his own ma- 
chinery for thinking is as strange and new to him as are 
the objects of the outside world. He is new to himself 
and needs a guide to show him how to use his powers. 
The world at bottom is simple and the child, if rightly 
guided, has the mental power to grasp this simple world 
structure. It is the business of teachers to find in the 
important studies the few main centers or avenues of 
thought and to set them forth in simple, objective illus- 
tration which a child can understand. i 

To make a proper acquaintance with the world, then, 

the child should not be required to wander through an 

. , infinite network of roadways and bypaths, but 

A few simple , -^ j t- ^ 

ideas rule should be guided wisely along a few main high- 
® ^°^ ways so as to get the general topography and the 
striking, important features of the landscape. Neither a 
jumbled collection of small topics nor a disjointed multi- 
tude of important facts will satisfy a child's necessities in 
the way of knowledge. He should be led to find the few 
strategic centers of knowledge by the full and prompt mas- 
tery of which he will soon be able to discern, to organize, 
and to control his world. The child should be allowed to 
discover that a few big, simple ideas rule the world. As 
the rising sun illumines the earth, so a great idea sheds 
light and meaning far and wide. The life history of an 
oak tree from the acorn to maturity can be readily grasped 
in its essential features by a child, and with this as a basis 
he can soon interpret the Hfe of many kinds of trees and 
of great forests. A locomotive engine is an elaborate 
combination of mechanical elements and shrewd invention, 
but the expansive power of steam applied in the case of a 



A BASIS FOR SIMPLIFYING STUDIES 1 25 

simple boiler and steam chest can be easily demonstrated. 
Yet upon this one idea is based largely the growth of our 
vast railroad system and steam navigation. Even the 
complexities of social and institutional life yield to simple 
interpretations. The story of the Good Samaritan sets 
forth clearly a principle of conduct which, once applied, 
as it ought to be, would improve conditions of human life 
throughout the world. As a whole, human society is a 
complex organization, but the ideas that should control 
and organize it are simple and easily intelligible to a frank, 
unprejudiced mind. 

From these and other illustrations we might conclude 
that a few ideas concretely and amply demonstrated to 
a child would go a long way toward explaining the world, 
would at least put him on the track of discovering and inter- 
preting the larger forces that govern and organize his own 
life and the life about him. Such studies should give a 
child first, broad surveys of extensive knowledge areas and, 
secondly, a deepening and enriching insight into the mean- 
ings which lie back of the endless objects and activities 
observed. 

Just as a few large rivers drain the continents, so a few 
channels of thought drain out the meaning of whole studies. 
If we could find a few trunk lines of developing thought in 
each school study and then organize and master knowledge 
on this basis, we might greatly simplify and enrich the 
processes of learning. As instructors we should direct 
our attention very sharply to this peculiar quality and 
tendency in knowledge, namely, to get itself strongly and 
intensely organized at a few centers and to run deep and 
strong in a few main channels. These large teaching units, 
objectively demonstrated in each study, are the true high- 



126 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

ways of knowledge for children. This is a simple, demo- 
cratic view of education which strips it of its complexity 
and puts it within reach of every child. 

Knowledge, Hke wise military tactics, has 

The nature 

ofknowi- strategic centers where it is strongly organized 
gested^^" ^^^ becomes powerful for offense or defense. If 

through we desire to understand complex mihtary opera- 
analogies . , 1 • n 

tions we study out the mnuence of one or more 

of these strategic centers. 

Knowledge, like the trunk line of a railway system, draws 
all goods and travel into this central traffic movement. 
If we seek to master the extensive commerce of a great 
country, we study one of its central traffic routes and 
compare it with others. 

Knowledge, like a tree, organizes its life forces and builds 
up its structure around a central axis of growth. If we 
wish to understand tree Hfe and the meaning of forestry, 
we study carefully the Hfe history and growth of one great 
forest tree in its relation to other trees, to soil and surround- 
ings, and to man. 

Knowledge is Hke a machine in operation. It works out 
a process looking toward a definite, desired result. A loom 
is a machine built and adapted in all its parts to carry on the 
process of weaving cloth. Study out the parts of this one 
machine and see how they cooperate to produce cloth by the 
act of weaving and we shall understand the basal principle 
of weaving and of all textile industries the world over. 

Knowledge, like a power plant at Niagara, produces and 
brings under control a thought energy which can be turned 
to account in many fields of experience. Study out and 
completely understand the Niagara power plant and on that 
basis we can judge the value of water powers along the 



A BASIS FOR SIMPLIFYING STUDIES 1 27 

mountain streams and big rivers throughout our whole 
country, and later in other countries. This is one of 
the big conceptions that is organizing modern industry, 
working along the line of scientific knowledge. 

Knowledge, like any well-thought-out human project in 
industry or government, has in it a controlHng, organizing 
idea, working out a rational whole, for example, a transat- 
lantic cable, the Brooklyn Bridge, a city waterworks, 
the Suez Canal, the flour mills at Minneapolis. On this 
basis our modern industries and human occupations are 
now organized and rationalized as big knowledge units, 
as complex thought wholes. It requires comprehensive 
brains nowadays to organize and manage big business, 
because such a business enterprise is a large, organized, 
objective unit of thought. If the schoolmaster wishes 
to find out and train himself in great, simple thought 
processes, let him study the important, well-organized 
industrial projects. Nowhere else will he find such close 
practical adjustment of great thought processes, to neces- 
sary life conditions, as in the human occupations. No- 
where else will he find better compacted and organized 
thought units. They are big, objective demonstrations 
of man's power to think and to organize the materials of 
thought in relation to human needs. They are important 
projects which serve as good object lessons for children's 
full and careful study. 

In other words, whenever we study properly any impor- 
tant new subject, the elements of knowledge, the facts, 
are in the process of grouping themselves into a 
larger unit, often into an objective whole, as, a grow into 
factory, a railroad, a military campaign, a mas- ^"^ ® ^® 
terpiece of literature. The facts, until they get themselves 



128 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

organized into these large groups or central units, have 
little or no meaning, are not knowledge properly speaking. 
Facts in order to become knowledge must get into some 
organization, into some rational whole, and this in turn 
may be a vantage ground for interpreting other similar 
wholes in still larger groups and in whole series. 

Thus facts and so-called materials of knowledge do not 

seem to find any good stopping place until they develop 

into a consistent whole, and find themselves 

learning is brought together by some principle of unity. 

growth and 'pj^g purposive process by which the facts have 

organization r- jr r- j 

come together develops them into an organic 
unit. As learners, until we reach this point where organi- 
zation sets in, we are in helpless confusion. We cannot 
see the woods for the trees. The teacher, of course, ought 
to see the end from the beginning. This big, organizing 
unit of thought has already worked out its full course in 
his mind in its essential order. Otherwise he is but a 
blind leader. Learning is the process of thinking out these 
large units or projects in their natural growth and 
organization. 

The teacher should keep this central unit of thought, 
this purpose, like a pole star, clearly in view or else he, too, 
may become a wanderer among dead facts, surrounded 
with graveyard knowledge. He may be merely reading 
tombstone inscriptions. The children require wise guides 
to keep them headed toward the main centers, these beck- 
oning and summoning peaks of knowledge. Like Bunyan, 
they should keep the Delectable Mountains plainly in 
sight. 

At the end of every important series of lessons the chil- 
dren should come out into a broad place with an open view. 



A BASIS FOR SIMPLIFYING STUDIES 1 29 

This brings a regrouping of abundant facts and experiences 
into a new and important conception, a fresh and valu- 
able interpretation of the world from a better 
standpoint. Until they reach this point where rounded 

knowledge has organized itself into a well- ^*^* °^ , 

. knowledge 

rounded unit of study fully mastered by the 

children, they stop short of any true accomplishment. No 

amount of memory drills on stark facts is a substitute for 

knowledge. In such case our house is still only half built, 

our bread is only half baked. 

On the basis of the previous discussion we may get rid 

of a false notion as to what knowledge is. A collection of 

miscellaneous facts about a subject is of such 

A false con- 
mf erior grade from the standpoint of true knowl- ception of 

edge that we are willing to discard it. Passing ^^^ledge 
an examination on these facts with a high grade is not a 
proof of scholarship. It is quite conceivable that a person 
may have an extensive memory of facts in geography, 
science, or history with little perception of meanings, 
relations, and values, combined with small power of inter- 
pretation or use. In the schools to-day there is more or 
less predominance of this superficial — what might per- 
haps be better called false — ^ knowledge. Our whole 
course of study is much cumbered with miscellaneous, 
ill-assorted facts and formulae which have not yet emerged 
into knowledge. There is too much straggling informa- 
tion or misinformation. A whole army of stragglers isn't 
worth much. Teachers are still much under the dominance 
of the fact-cramming, storage theory of knowledge. They 
are not yet convinced of the organizing quality and strength 
of important, controlling, purposive ideas. Among teach- 
ers generally there is a lack of perspective with regard to 



I30 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

big things versus little things. They are not yet clear as 
to what the real, purposeful centers of thought are, 
around which the facts may best be organized. 

The vital element of knowledge in a big unit lies in its 
principle of growth and organization, not in the facts as 
such. The incorporation of facts into a growing project 
like the building of a railway, or the lay-out and construc- 
tion of a city water system in New York, for example, 
brings these facts together into their proper relations, 
and absorbs them into an energetic, forward, practical 
thought-movement. This leads on to the solution of an 
important problem vitally related to city and state. The 
energizing principle of growth and organization toward 
some desired and much-needed end should carry forward 
the thinking processes of children in every topic to a well- 
matured result. This formative, creative idea is also the 
working principle that constructs a good story like the 
King of the Golden River, or Dickens's Christmas Carol, 
or a poem like Horatius at the Bridge. The thought 
energy is pushing forward and must have a chance to real- 
ize its purpose. The dynamic quality that organizes and 
develops a big teaching unit must be in evidence or else 
the distinctive quality that characterizes true knowledge is 
absent. The salt has lost its savor. When a topic has been 
thus denatured, it should be banished from the school. 

Each project or unit of study as it grows and organizes 
the materials essential to it, when it has once developed 
into an energetic thought movement and has 
piete unit brought a new and valuable interpretation to 
only a be- ^^q^^y upon the world, has just barely begun its 
useful career. It has become in the child's mind 
a life center around which other kindred subjects in the 



A BASIS FOR SIMPLIFYING STUDIES 131 

future will group and organize themselves in a still larger 
expansion of knowledge, because it is based upon a con- 
structive idea which produces similar effects under a variety 
of conditions. 

We sometimes call one of these completed units of study 
or strategic centers in knowledge a type, because it has a 
marked and characteristic quality which seems 

, . The type 

permanent and reappears on many occasions combines 
and in many other big topics. Moreover we are Jj^^^^wtfa 
pleased to find a few things in the world that are 
typical, that are more stable and permanent, not subject 
to the prevaiUng law of change. The type fixes a perma- 
nent quality in a whole series of shifting, changing topics. 
We are tempted even to give fixity to ideas as tj^es, as 
if they had set like a chunk of cement into a rigid form and 
had become a fixed pattern. But knowledge, in the quaHty 
of ideas, resents this sort of stiffness and cramping limita- 
tion. If ideas can be called types, they are variable. They 
are types of growth and progress. An idea is a growing, 
organizing principle. When it ceases to grow it ceases to 
be. Variation under the type is the law of growth. 

And yet the notion of types in knowledge will properly 
assert itself and claim serious consideration. Indeed the 
type serves an important purpose. Nature has ^^^ 
at least a few great patterns on which she con- simpUfies 
structs her life forms and develops the Hf e pro- **^ ^ ^® 
cesses, e.g. the vertebrate structure in animals, the endogens 
and exogens among trees. The study of type forms among 
vertebrates lays the basis for a quick understanding of 
innumerable kindred forms in later studies. We are com- 
pelled to admit that a standard ear of corn is a nearly per- 
fect type of millions of ears ; that an average white pine, 



132 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

in life history, structure, and function, is a good type of 
white pines in general, and in varying degrees, of all pine 
trees, and in a less degree of all trees and vegetable growths. 
In the same way the cecropia moth in its metamorphosis 
is a type of moths and of insects. New York harbor is 
a type of large harbors ; Mt. Shasta of volcanoes ; Webster 
of statesmen. If a child is to get an appreciation of world 
order and system, so as to adjust himself to his surround- 
ings, the elaborate study of a few fundamental, growing 
t3^es is the shortest and best road to this end. It results 
in a marvelous simpHfication of a seemingly complex world. 
It is true that the predominance of types everywhere in 
evidence in the world lends something of monotony to the 
forest of pines, to the wheatfield, to the dress 
dominates ^^^ customs of people. Nature repeats her 

the past and forms with sHght variations in countless millions 
the future ... 

of individuals, and the mastery of a few of these 
leading types in their origin, growth, and relations is far- 
reaching in its power of interpretation. When an impor- 
tant unit of study has been fully demonstrated as a good 
type of thousands or milHons of similar objects or phenom- 
ena in the world, it not only explains many similar things 
in the present, but it becomes the basis for a continuous 
expansion and enrichment of the fundamental idea in the 
type for future uses. This same idea is at work in the 
world on a grand scale, under changing conditions, produc- 
ing kindred results. To go on following and interpreting 
this idea in its new surroundings and in conjunction with 
other forces in the world will develop an alert and versatile 
mind. Education should see to it that a child first 
thoroughly gets these basal ideas, and secondly, that he is 
kept busy turning them to account in new situations. 



A BASIS FOR SIMPLIFYING STUDIES I33 

The child's experience should grow on and on in richness 
along each typical highway of thought. 

The school can afford the time and effort required to 
teach a few great, sinaple lessons thoroughly, richly, copi- 
ously. It may well exhaust its amplest resources 
in concreting, expanding, and applying a very A sifting 

f • I 4r T, u u ' % / andresifting 

few primary types of human behavior, of social till we find 
and industrial activity, and of natural phenom- ^peg*^*^ 
ena. Among teachers the wisest should set 
themselves to the task of selecting among big things the 
most important, among superior types the more highly 
significant and far-reaching. Then from those superior 
topics, by a sifting process, they should reselect and choose 
again the better half. We are then prepared to gather 
together and concentrate upon these focal units those rich 
knowledge resources which will intensify the organizing 
ideas in these topics. The best is good enough for chil- 
dren. But the best is never at its best until it is framed 
up in its full natural environment and life relation, until it 
is given an objective, artistic setting. Here is the problem 
of the teacher. 

This is another way of saying that knowledge is simple, 
continuous, and consistent throughout; that the ideas 

we start with in the early education of children ^ 

-^ The sim- 

are the selfsame ideas, naturally developed, piicityof 
which we shall come out with at the end of our ^®^*®<*se 
school course. They are so simple and far-reaching that 
they continue to grow to the end of life and dominate its 
results. Education itself is a life process, a continuous 
growth and expansion along a few basal lines of thought 
throughout the whole life period. It is dynamic in its 
forward, constructive, organizing movement. 



134 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

This process of simpKfying knowledge through organi- 
zation along a few main channels of thought provides also 
for that ample enrichment of every big topic which gives 
it the complete, wholesome effect of real knowledge. The 
intensive enrichment of main topics is the subject of our 
next chapter. 

Our conclusion is that we should get rid of the static 
conception of knowledge, that we should throw overboard 
ill-assorted, miscellaneous collections of facts, and that we 
should focus attention upon those ideas and projects which 
are strongly purposive and far-reaching in their scope and 
influence. Then we shall be surprised at the marvelous 
simplicity that comes from a clear insight into a few basal 
things, that is, from the proper organization of knowledge 
around growing Hfe centers. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE ENRICHMENT OF INSTRUCTION BY THE INTEN- 
SIVE TREATMENT OF LARGE UNITS 

One of the main problems of modern education is how to 
make profitable use of the large increase of knowledge 
that has deluged our curriculum with the influx 
of new studies. To what extent do these proj- -^^f *° 

^ •' make use 

ects as large teaching units give adequate ex- of the richer 
pression to this greatly increased content of ele- studSs ° 
mentary studies? For several years there has 
been in progress a vigorous campaign for putting a deeper 
content into common-school instruction. The new sub- 
jects, including biography, literary classics, nature study, 
industrial and household arts, hygiene and sanitation, have 
greatly enlarged the knowledge resources of the elementary 
school. Drawing, music, and the decorative arts are also 
winning a large place in the course, while the practical 
aspects of agriculture, school gardening, commercial geog- 
raphy, and physical training are growing and expanding. 
In fact the last thirty years have witnessed not only a 
steadily increasing number of studies but, more important, 
a surprising improvement in the quahty of thought. We 
have dropped into a habit of boasting of this remarkable 
progress of the schools and of this improved quality of both 
cultural and practical knowledge. All the better kinds of 
knowledge, all the nobler varieties of human experience, 
past and present, are represented in the school course. 

135 



136 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

We hardly know where to look for more worlds to conquer, 
unless we include in the course the wide range of strictly 
vocational studies. 

Now a closer examination of this greatly enlarged pro- 
gram of the schools may surprise us with the discovery 
that our important school studies have not been 
poverish- enriched, but have been seriously impoverished, 
ment of j-^y ^hese changes. The outcome of all this ap- 
parent progress is the exact opposite of what was 
intended and confidently expected. We have doubled 
the number of studies and reduced by half the time devoted 
to important topics. Many of the new studies are badly 
organized and meagerly and poorly taught. We have 
eight or ten separate subjects of study each day where we 
once had four or five, and little time can be had for prepa- 
ration, i.e. for real study. The lesson periods are neces- 
sarily short and the treatment of even important topics is 
brief and scrappy. We run over a multitude of rich sub- 
jects superficially and have Httle time to study important 
topics thoroughly. To get all these things even meagerly 
done, teachers and children are cramped and nervously 
over stimulated. While the situation in many schools 
may not be so discouraging as described above, still these 
are clearly marked tendencies of our times. Our boasted 
enrichment of instruction turns out after all in some re- 
spects to be a delusion. By this overcrowding of studies 
we are in danger of losing a real grip on studies, i.e. our 
hold upon those superior elements of useful knowledge and 
refinement and even of character-building which are of 
chief value. Our curriculum has waxed great, but many 
boys and girls are kept on the verge of mental confusion 
and discouragement. 



ENRICHMENT OE INSTRUCTION 137 

With an undoubted honest zeal for progress and with 
the best intentions for the enrichment of elementary edu- 
cation, we have pushed rapidly forward in our How to save 
generous schemes for enlarging the school pro- *^® ^^^ 
gram and the result is naturally an overaccumulation of 
knowledge. Now with this embarrassment of riches we 
find ourselves in the pUght of the swimmer whose precious 
bag of gold is pulling him down, or we are like a heavily 
laden vessel in a storm. We may have to throw overboard 
a good share of the cargo to save the ship. 

Our first answer to the question, Is the elementary course 
of study rich in content ? is — Yes. Its richness is so great 
that it has become a burden and a danger. The surprising 
bounty and fruitfulness of our elementary studies have now 
for the first time dawned upon us in full measure, and just 
as we reach out to seize this richness and appropriate it 
for children, it slips through our fingers and vanishes. 
We wake up as from a dream and wonder what has hap- 
pened. The course of study has been vastly enlarged; 
but the minds of the children have not been enriched. The 
results we now witness have happened in the natural 
order and need not surprise us. We have not yet solved 
our problem — How to enrich the course of study as a 
means of enriching the lives of children. We cannot afford 
to surrender the large knowledge values that have come 
to us so copiously from literature and stories, from biog- 
raphy and history, from nature study and travel, nor the 
sound, practical utilities derived from the industrial arts, 
applied science, and modern EngHsh. Nor can we deal 
profitably with this present multiplicity of subjects, this 
overaccumulation of studies. 

It has been easier to collect these various treasures of 



138 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

knowledge and to pile them up in the curriculum, than to 
know what to do with them when they are once collected. 

It is an easy thing to introduce a new study, 
introduce yes, even a half dozen new studies, into the 
new s es ^.^^.g^^ ^^^ j^ ^^ difficult beyond all computation 
to select and organize these new materials with reference 
to other studies and to children. Thus far we have 
done little more than collect the raw materials for 
a course of study and like children making collections, 
we have gathered much material that we have little or 
no use for. 

In trying to select and group properly the richest thought 
materials for the elementary curriculum, we are working 

at one of the most complex and many-sided prob- 

To select . 

and arrange l^^^s that the human mind can venture upon. 
diffi^iSf ^^ It is the task of sifting out and arranging the 
superior elements of knowledge in all the sub- 
jects, with special reference to the growing and assimilat- 1 
ing powers of children. To lay out a good plan for any one 
of a dozen large school studies would be a great achieve- 
ment, though it be a familiar study like arithmetic or read- 
ing. To do this for all studies, old and new, each with a 
strong individuality, with proper mutual adjustment, is 
a huge task. 

This rapid accumulation of excessive quantities of knowl- 
edge in the school program, and the failure to achieve the 
results aimed at and expected have brought us, for the 
moment, to a standstill, and we must size up our whole 
problem from a new standpoint with a more comprehen- 
sive grasp of all the elements involved. How are we to 
simpHfy this overcrowded course of study and yet retain 
its richness, its best content ? 



ENRICHMENT OF INSTRUCTION 1 39 

In facing this new problem, teachers everywhere by a 
natural instinct have asked, "What shall we eliminate?" 
The word eliminate has come into vogue in recent ^ 

° . A positive 

years as expressing the means of escape from this basis for 
educational dilemma. We have indeed made °^samzation 
some progress in eliminating nonessentials. More re- 
cently another kindred expression, ^^ minimum essentials ^^ 
attempts to express the need of the hour. We venture to 
suggest that still another phrase expresses the need better 
yet, What are the ^'centers of organization^^ ? What is the 
basis for the constructive organization of the curriculum? 
Elimination is a negative term; organization is positive 
and calls for a center and basis upon which to build. What 
are the basal projects or constructive ideas in the main 
studies upon which to collect and organize the knowledge 
stuff? However, the ideas expressed by elimination and 
organization are merely different aspects of the same large 
problem. 

The question is no longer whether or not our elementary 
studies are rich in content, but rather how to get at and 
utilize in schools the best part of this superior richness. 
We cannot consent to the loss or abandonment of the 
substantial enrichment of human knowledge and experi- 
ence that has come into our school course in recent years. 
Educationally this enlargement of the field of elementary 
studies is the greatest achievement of our times and has 
given the school its central position of influence in the world. 
We have finally uncovered the deep, abounding sources 
of knowledge in elementary studies. Let this fact be 
estabUshed once for all as of main importance and that 
this superior quahty of enriching knowledge is present and 
available for the instruction of children. How to preserve 



I40 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

and make use of this surprising wealth of cultural and 
practical knowledge, how to reduce the whole to a simple 
basis by a central organization on a few lines of thought, 
is our serious problem. We have not yet learned how to 
give up for the time being a large number of less important 
things in order to save the best. We could trade off a 
multitude of minor scrappy topics in order to gain time for 
handling a few big, rich projects adequately. 

It is a question of somewhat radical reorganization, 
for we have not yet seriously attacked the problem of 

organization. We have been discussing and 
Going trying out eHmination without determining be- 

the tap roots forehand the basis of organization, the few vital 
ed^°^' centers of purposive thought. We shall not 

reorganize our complex course of study on the 
basis of small expedients, by trimming out a little here 
and a little there. We require something more than a 
pruning knife. We must undertake a genuine reorganiza- 
tion on the basis of strong, comprehensive, constructive 
ideas. After completing a survey of children by estimat- 
ing their abilities and needs — we should turn our atten- 
tion to the deep knowledge subjects, to the main ideas 
that lie embedded in the school studies themselves. We 
should make a closer acquaintance with the original 
sources of knowledge in school studies as related to life, 
and on this basis alone we shall strengthen and enlarge 
our capacity for organization. It is not by skimming the 
surface of things nor by dealing with mere outlines and 
minimum essentials and by occasional eliminations that 
we shall settle the course, but by going down deep into 
the main roots of important subjects of study. We shall 
find there the natural centers of organization. This is 



ENRICHMENT OF INSTRUCTION 141 

said with all due respect for children and their needs and 
for the principles of teaching and their value. 

The present demand for this enrichment of the curriculum 
based on a proper reorganization of studies has behind 
it the heavy pressure of necessity. For more 
than a generation this movement to incorporate fuTtendln-"] 
a full measure of these superior thought ma- ^i^s to be 

^ ^ combined 

terials into the common-school course has been 
gaining power till it has become irresistible. In spite 
of this the needed reorganization of studies has not gone 
far and meets with powerful resistance. It is in fact a 
colossal undertaking. We still have in the main our 
old course of study. The conservative tendency to hold 
fast to old ideas and practice is quite as strong as the urgent 
demand of the progressives for new studies. In fact we 
have been adding new studies more rapidly by far than we 
have been discarding old ones. Most teachers and book- 
makers in planning courses are conservative. Subjects 
that once get established in textbooks and in the habits 
of teachers are slow to disappear. The public school 
system is a massive structure, embodied in textbooks and 
curricula and in long prevailing habits of hundreds of 
thousands of teachers. We may build additions here and 
there but any serious change in the main structure of the 
course is a slow process. 

But free discussion may bring about a cooperative effort 
between conservatives and progressives. Much ground 
must be given up on both sides before we can have a simple 
and reasonable course of study. Teachers should look this 
important problem squarely in the face. With unprejudiced 
minds they should estimate openly and fairly the relative 
values and mutual relation of these two powerful tendencies. 



142 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

The old course of study in the common schools which 
prevailed for many years was chiefly formal and instru- 
^^ ,^ mental, devoted to a mastery of the symbols 

The old IT 

course was which express thought, to formal readmg, writ- 
formal .^g^ ^^^ spelHng, arithmetic, and composition. 
The right drill upon these formal exercises was believed, 
also, to have a superior disciplinary value. This fact that 
elementary studies were mechanical, deaHng mainly with 
arbitrary symbols, estabhshed early and deeply the convic- 
tion that primary studies were by nature weak in content 
and to be mastered by sheer memory effort. 

It is not strange that the school became a dry, dull 
place devoted to drill, and that the theories of education 
in vogue supported this disciplinary training, 
of enriching But a remarkable change took place with the 
studies introduction of this surprising group of enrich- 
ing, thought-stimulating studies, — story-telHng, biog- 
raphy, nature study and excursions, geography and travel, 
dramatizing of literature, games, construction work, draw- 
ing and industrial arts, and physical training. Later still 
came appKed science, health and sanitation, school garden- 
ing and agriculture. All these studies fill up and expand 
the mind with activities, with information, with engrossing 
ideas, with cultural, emotional, and esthetic experiences. 
They give equal emphasis to the useful or practical on one 
side, and to the cultural or ideal on the other side. 

Naturally there was a powerful effort by the school- 
masters to impose the formal drill method of 
ing^the"*^" the old school upon the incoming, enriching 
thought thought studies, because those old methods were 

studies 

in vogue and famiUar to the teachers. When 
modern science, history, literature, and geography, and even 



ENRICHMENT OF INSTRUCTION 143 

the shop activities were first taken up by the schools, they, 
too, were formalized and stereotyped into a dull recital 
of facts and were stripped of thought content almost as 
naked as the three ^^R's." The school and the teachers 
were still in the formal stage and all studies were reduced 
to the same level. It is not strange, therefore, that people 
at first failed to see in even these new studies any rich and 
scholarly thought material or deep, inspiring, cultural 
influences. And yet these new studies had opened up 
fountains of inexhaustible richness. It was impossible 
that these copious and enriching streams of thought should 
fail in the end to break through these formal barriers and 
display to the world their boundless resources. This 
event has now happened and we are fully conscious of the 
unmeasured wealth of knowledge and culture at our free 
disposal in history, in literature, in the fine arts, in music, 
in science, and in geography. In fact now that the flood 
gates have been opened and these refreshing streams of 
knowledge have poured into the schools through these 
various channels, we find ourselves swamped with an over- 
supply of the riches of knowledge. 

Enthusiastic teachers of these instructive and enlivening 
modern subjects have been tempted to turn the tables 
upon the old formal schoolmasters and demand 
that we give up these routine methods of teach- The swing 

, of the pen- 

mg, these formal drills and reviews, the lock- duiumto 
step and the memory grind. They have gone studfes* 
so far as to impose the new thought methods 
upon the old formal studies. We no longer need these 
mechanical drills and painful, meaningless memorizings, 
they say. Give the children good inspiring projects and 
problems and stories and they will pick up the formal 



144 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

elements of reading and language and spelling. Incidental 
appropriation of those symbols and technical formalities 
will take place. It is not our purpose at this point to 
attempt to show the exact relation between the content 
and formal studies. It would be tolerant and fair-minded 
to say that the two classes of studies by nature are so widely 
different that they require different methods, and it would 
be a mistake to impose arbitrarily and wholly the plan 
and method of one group upon the other. 

In the development of our curriculum in recent years the 

deeper and stronger thought studies have thus risen to 

great prominence. But it is easy to spoil these 

A stroiiH 

drift fruitful studies in the handling. The crowding 

toward jj^ ^f many studies has forced us back into for- 

formalism , •' 

malism. The mere formal memorizing of lone- 
some facts in geography and history is just as tedious and 
irksome to children as the memorizing of symbols and 
alphabets. In reading, writing, spelling, and numbers, 
the forms and symbols must be mastered as individual 
facts. But in geography and history it is a mistake to 
suppose that isolated facts have any significance. Thought 
studies, like literature and history, differ essentially from 
the form studies. They center in ideas and not in indi- 
vidual facts, at least not in mere forms. Ideas alone give 
content to the great thought studies. There has been a 
mistaken notion among teachers and even among scholars 
that children should store up a large quantity of these iso- 
lated facts in history or geography before they could make 
a proper beginning in these studies. A few years ago it 
was supposed even in high schools and colleges that the 
way to study literature was to learn the name and date of 
an author and a list of the titles of his works, and so one 



ENRICHMENT OF INSTRUCTION^ I45 

after another in tedious succession the dry bones of litera- 
ture were memorized. We have since learned that the 
better way is to plunge at once into the original works of 
writers. Read the best stories and poems. Get directly 
at the main ideas of the author in the fullness and strength 
of the author's own presentation. This curious opinion 
that we must first learn a lot of bare facts about a subject 
and store them away for a period of years and later allow 
them to develop into meaning is a mother of blunders in 
teaching. 

The case is perfectly clear in literature. It may become 
equally clear in geography, history, and science. When 
this one great fact has become clear, we shall see 
that the elementary school is the favored place for swe treat- 
the full exploitation of the strong content studies, ^^^^e 
Heretofore we have been dealing too much with teaching 
individual facts, isolated fragments of these rich 
subjects. We have been mainly engaged in learning the 
tables of contents, and not in examining the contents 
themselves. The time has now come when these deep, 
inspiring subjects should be opened up in their full rich- 
ness to children's minds. At this point we strike the hub 
and center of the whole problem of enriching elementary 
studies. Can we by any means break loose from the 
inherited routine of fact-cramming and memorizing which 
has been clamped even upon the big-thought studies and 
gain for ourselves the freedom to deal directly and Hberally 
with a few of these large units of study in a realistic and 
thought-inspiring way ? If this conception of study should 
prevail, we shall be forced to a rigid selection of a few focal 
units of study in each of the main thought subjects. Each 
of these large units, once selected, will become the basis 



146 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

for an intensive, what we might justly call, masterly, study, 
unearthing the choicest and richest elements in it. Like 
a marrow bone each subject must be cracked open so as to 
reveal the inner fatness. 

In the three grades of the primary school, children have 
approximately mastered the symbols and forms and are 

ready to plunge into the deeper knowledge sub- 
^v'^r^*^^ jects. At the beginning of the fourth grade we 
lessons in are prepared to encounter with the children the 
gra^dS^ *^ ^ ^^^1 problems of the thought studies. Here we 

should be very wise and circumspect in making 
our beginnings. (See Chapter IV.) We must have some 
big, interesting, objective topics, some first-class stories 
of heroic adventure, of travel, exploration, and pioneer 
exploit. Literature has a few strong old tales ; biography 
is ready with its Bruces and Boones and Champlains; 
geography is picturesque, descriptive, and full of big proj- 
ects; science can display its inventions and discoveries. 
The temptation is to undertake too many even of these 
superior tales and projects. One story elaborately and 
artistically presented is better than many, half done. 

We are now called upon to select more carefully the 
interesting and lasting thought-centers, the projects around 

which this copious and inspiring knowledge can 
ample of be best grouped and organized. We have been 

groping after these consolidation centers. We 
have now at hand the full knowledge materials and we lack 
only a clearer vision of the centers of organization. In 
spite of the recent overcrowded condition of our curricu- 
lum, in spite of our strong traditional tendencies toward 
formal drill, the schools already have made a remarkable 
advance toward absorbing these instructive materials into 



ENRICHMENT OF INSTRUCTION 147 

the appropriate centers. In literature, for example, we 
have gone over, both in theory and practice, to the use of 
complete stories and poems, EngHsh masterpieces as wholes. 
We are learning also to center attention upon one of these 
units of study, to make it a rendezvous for important and 
far-reaching facts and relations. These complete products 
of our Hterary chiefs are now distributed through all the 
grades from the first to the eighth. The stories of Haw- 
thorne, Scott, Grimm, Homer, Irving, Shakespeare, and 
the Bible have been chosen because they are strong, sim- 
ple, and significant, containing those germs of thought 
which are vital and constructive, and suitable. We have 
found that children's minds spring to meet the occasion 
and grapple with these world-building ideas. The same 
stories used one or two generations ago in the college Greek 
classes are now commonly read or told and dramatized 
with enthusiasm by children of the third and fourth grades, 
e.g. the tales and adventures of Ulysses, Perseus, Achilles, 
and Hercules. In the grammar grades, Evangeliney Lady 
of the Lake, and Merchant of Venice, once used only in 
normal schools and colleges, are fully exploited before 
the high school age. Sometimes they are not well taught, 
but that may be partly due to the fact that we fail to get 
good teachers. 

We now recognize the power of children to think, and 
we permit them even in primary grades to exercise their 
brains upon thought material of permanent value. In 
literature we recognize the privilege and the right of the 
children to think, and to think on a high level of intellectual, 
esthetic, and moral truth. We may go one step further and 
say that if children do not absorb in childhood a large part 
of the finer cultural influences or sentiments of the best 



148 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

stories and poems, they will be seriously handicapped in 
adult life and no later opportunities in college or university 
are likely to make good the deficiency. 

This successful experience in the use of large units of 
study or classics in Hterature with children throughout 
the elementary school suggests that other im- 
biographicai portant thought studics, history, science^ and 
stones geography, and industrial arts may use to ad- 

vantage a similar plan of big projects with big- thought 
material. The schools have been at work selecting and 
proving up on these important topics. During the last 
few years historical instruction in the grades has been try- 
ing out a series of sturdy biographical narratives which 
show a strong mental fiber. The fives of notable explorers, 
inventors, statesmen, and benefactors, when aptly de- 
scribed, exhibit in personal, objective illustration projects 
and ideas which have shaped progress and built up stable 
institutions. Such full, biographical stories, more than 
almost any other influence, impress the minds of children 
with the real American spirit. In our schools the tendency 
toward biographical stories is increasingly strong. It 
furnishes a generous and inspiring content which leads up 
through representative characters to an appreciation of 
important historical movements and great leadership. 

In the natural sciences, an important succession of dis- 
coveries exhibits some of the main projects of appfied 
Applied science in objective demonstrations. The re- 
science markable inventions of scientists in a striking 
fashion lead on to a study and investigation of the deeper 
problems of science. An adequate introduction to our 
modern advances in the industries, in commerce, in medi- 
cine and in machinery, can be based upon such biographies. 



ENRICHMENT OF INSTRUCTION I49 

Finally, geography brings upon exhibit an array of big 
projects by which man has put to his service the forces of 
nature, i.e. national roads, steamship lines, 
schemes of river regulation, the reconstruction projects 
of cities, the drainage of swamps and reclaiming *** ^eog- 
of deserts, and reduction works for gold and 
copper. Geography abounds in these colossal but simple 
objective projects that display man's power and ingenuity 
in controlling and organizing the forces about him, — all 
as definite, striking object lessons. These big, expansive, 
world-constructing projects, descriptively elaborated, are 
now coming more or less into common use in the schools. 
Though gigantic in dimensions and power, they are simple 
and by no means beyond the thinking ability of boys and 
girls. Indeed as big object lessons they just suit the frame 
of their aspiring minds. They have produced an awaken- 
ing as to the meaning of large things in the real world that 
has surprised teachers. Children have a native right to 
these big projects most worth thinking about and in a 
form objective and stimulating to the imagination. 

History, geography, and science are thus found to be 
open to inspection for boys and girls, first of all as big, 
concrete, simple object lessons, full of world 
information, well worth the knowing, closely 
identified with the active forces at work about us shaping 
our world. These are the things for the understanding 
of which it is worth while to spend time and money in 
sending our children to school and in keeping them there 
under wide-awake, well-informed teachers. 

In the reorganization of our course of study we must pick 
out the biggest and best of these large topics which embody 
the constructive, purposive ideas that are to frame up our 



150 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

world of knowledge. We may learn how to work out the 
complete, elaborate treatment of these big, central units 
and bring them into an orderly sequence. 

We are not without experience in this kind of effort. 
A goodly number of important knowledge units or projects 
have been developed with a full treatment and have been 
tried out in classes. Successful efforts have been made, 
for example, with such units as New York Harbor, the 
first steamboat on the Ohio and Mississippi, Burgoyne's 
campaign, the Erie Canal, the Virginia Plantation, the 
purchase of Louisiana, the Panama Canal, corn production, 
the cotton plantation, the Pennsylvania Railroad, a Dakota 
wheat farm, irrigation in the West, the Rhine River, city 
sanitation. 

In this chapter we have been dealing with one of the 
very distinctive problems of our modern education, namely, 
how to make use of this new and surprising wealth of 
knowledge that has opened up. Does it belong to the 
elementary school? Are children capable of appreciating 
and enjoying this rich heritage of knowledge and refine- 
ment ? 

Summary of Main Points 

1. The influx of the modern thought studies and the 

consequent enlargement of the curriculum as 
a whole has been a great achievement in 
education. 

2. This has led to an overloading and congestion of the 
school program. The outcome is an actual impoverish- 
ment, through condensation, of the important studies, a 
natural and yet a very disappointing result. 

3. The demand of the conservatives for the retention 



ENRICHMENT OF INSTRUCTION 151 

of the old studies and methods, and the equally strong 
demand of the progressives for the introduction and steady 
enlargement of the new studies have made it impossible as 
yet to reorganize instruction on a simple basis. 

4. Literature, history, geography, and science have been 
pushing to the front with larger and richer contributions. 
And yet this enrichment can find no proper expression in 
a condensed and epitomized course of study. Somewhere 
we must find receptacles large enough and strong enough 
to contain these superior, vital elements of knowledge. 

5. The expanded teaching units, the big topics are these 
receptacles. The unstinted elaboration of these big teach- 
ing units furnishes the only opportunity for gathering in and 
preserving this indispensable, best content of knowledge. 

6. The intensive treatment of big projects is demanded 
in the interest of children, because it is the only avenue 
through which this deepening of thought can be brought 
home to the minds of children. All other plans have some- 
how failed to bring into use this superior, enHvening thought 
element. In fact our present short, abridgment methods 
of teaching these topics saps the life out of studies and 
leaves them weak in the very thought elements that ought 
to be strongest. 

7. It is the very nature of one of these big units to expand 
and to gather into itself a full measure of this enriching 
knowledge. It must be enlarged; it cannot be skele- 
tonized. 

8. By allowing one of these big units of study its full, 
natural growth, by which alone it can be fully understood 
and mastered by children, we accomphsh the two definite 
results aimed at in instruction — simplification and en- 
richment of instruction. 



CHAPTER IX 
LARGER LESSON PLANNING BASED ON PROJECTS 

The first eight chapters of this book bring to the front 

the large project, the expanded teaching unit, as a standard 

measure of knowledge which becomes the basis 

Collecting fQ^ ^}^g teaching process. It is important to 

and organiz- . , 

ing knowi- get this large conception of the standard teach- 
bfg pro^ects^ ing unit well grounded in our thought. Its 
supreme value is confirmed by the fact that on 
one side it determines the course of study and on the 
other side the details of method. By referring all the 
minor details and processes of instruction back to these 
important centers of organization we get a much broader 
conception of method in teaching. The process of collect- 
ing the abundant resources of knowledge and of combining 
them into these enlarged units of study may be called the 
larger lesson planning. Until we have broadly mapped 
out the field of study by selecting these big projects and 
have marshaled the forces of knowledge around them as 
centers, we have no proper basis for method in teaching. 
It seems strange that this important preliminary work has 
been left out of our calculations and that we have plunged 
headlong into instruction without it. This failure to lay 
the foundations of method broad and deep in large teach- 
ing units has rendered our discussions of method to a large 
extent trivial and formal. 

152 



LARGER LESSON PLANNING 1 53 

Deliberate, comprehensive planning and wise forethought 
on this large scale are peculiarly appropriate to the edu- 
cator's task. Careful daily planning has been 

This prc~ 

set down by all teachers as a thing of impor- liminary 
tance, but we now see that broad, deliberate les- g^aSation 
son planning strikes deep into the organization has been 
of knowledge in its broadest aspects as well as in 
its narrower daily activities. The discovery of a com- 
prehensive, tangible basis for lesson planning would go 
far toward solving the most perplexing problems of teach- 
ing. As a class we teachers have not taken this matter 
very seriously. Putting our reliance chiefly upon outHne 
courses of study and upon textbooks, we have not exerted 
ourselves to master the larger problems of lesson planning, 
what we have just called the central organization of knowl- 
edge at strategic points and the constructive continuity 
of thought extending through whole studies. We plod 
along through numerous details with the textbook as our 
guide, failing to get the broad, organizing surveys of knowl- 
edge. In a very narrow sense the one-day lesson may be 
complete in itself, but in a broader sense it should involve 
the course of study in wide-reaching relations both lon- 
gitudinally and crosswise. In the study of sanitary prob- 
lems Hke the water supply of cities or a wholesome milk 
supply from dairies, we should keep our eyes open to 
many-sided and far-reaching relations of such a subject 
of study. 

Teachers are now called upon to accustom themselves 
to this broader conception of lesson planning, based upon 
larger units, upon more comprehensive surveys of knowl- 
edge, and upon a far deeper scholarship. People in other 
professions have been practicing this wise foresight. 



154 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

The architect works for weeks and months on his plans 

for building before a bit of work has been done in the actual 

construction. A farmer is now compelled to look 

Foresight ^ 

in other ahead three or four years and to plan his crop 
pro essions ^q^^^Iqjt^ ^^(J stock raising. The merchant fore- 
casts the future, counting the cost and weighing possible 
contingencies before laying in a stock of goods. Insurance 
companies work on a long-time statistical schedule. So 
do all corporations that do business on a large scale. The 
teacher should not stumble along thoughtlessly from day 
to day. 

The large unit of study becomes thus the natural basis 
for our efforts at large lesson planning. It furnishes a 
definite, though flexible, scheme for organizing knowledge. 
Big, important segments of extensive knowledge, rounded 
up into full units of thought, furnish the true basis for the 
teacher's thinking. They should be grasped first in their 
comprehensive significance by the teacher and later exe- 
cuted in their fullness and detail. 

The large unit of study organized around a single, grow- 
ing idea is the central object of the teacher's serious thought. 
For its working out in the classroom five or ten 
The large qj- qyqh more lessons may be required. The 

unit con- 

sidered exact length of time or number of lessons may 
whoir* vary. The whole unit should be planned out 
in its proper sequence and thought-movement 
without regard at first to the number of lessons. Even 
the experienced teacher cannot foretell just how many 
lessons will be needed to complete a large subject, as the 
Vision of Sir Launfal, or Enoch Arden. This, owing to 
contingencies, is not predictable. If the main subject as 
a whole is well planned, the succession of individual lessons 



LARGER LESSON PLANNING 1 55 

will work out satisfactorily. Without this large plan it is 
a tedious and doubtful task to plan out a week's lessons 
ahead as separate units. Single lessons are in themselves 
seldom proper units of thought. To force them into this 
artificial form is misleading and wasteful of effort. It is 
better to let the large topic take its natural course and to 
reheve the teacher from tiresome and useless work. 

Big units of study not only furnish a sound, rational 
basis for lesson planning in the large, but they provide 
also a Hberal scheme of lesson organization freed 
from the cramping and petty details of over- '^f®?^? . . 
refinements in method. Big topics offer free unit in its 
scope for large thought-movements, while they aspects 
leave minor details to the judgment of individual 
teachers and to the demands of the moment. Teachers 
frequently make the mistake of painstaking effort in work- 
ing out many small, daily lesson plans instead of making 
a large, simple plan for a whole series of lessons. The 
teacher who, without stopping to survey and master a 
large topic Hke the Purchase of Louisiana in 1804, works 
out the first lesson, the second, the third, and so on for a 
week or ten days ahead has failed probably to grasp clearly 
the central idea upon which the whole series of lessons rests. 
The teacher has had a tedious task and the result is a series 
of lessons not well organized. Each day's lesson may be 
a fragment of some larger whole. But the fragments fail 
to come together to form the large unit. By breaking up 
knowledge into these unsatisfactory fragments, we lose 
sight of the organizing idea, and our school instruction 
becomes a collection of shreds and patches. This is lit- 
erally true. Instead of a few well-rounded units of study 
our school books often display a tedious and almost endless 



156 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

enumeration of mere facts and topics and these are inter- 
spersed with short summarizing statements little better 
than conventional platitudes. It is hard to see how even 
experienced teachers could plan wisely on the basis of such 
broken fragments of knowledge. A far more satisfactory 
and effective method of planning lessons than this hand-to- 
mouth process is much needed by teachers. The teacher 
should not be like the mole burrowing in the dark hoping 
to meet something, but he should have his eyes open look- 
ing ahead, and knowing what good things are in store, 
always conscious of the larger main issue. 

Our training schools for teachers are tempted to run to 
seed in the minutiae of lesson planning. There is always 
danger of losing sight of important governing ideas in devo- 
tion to these minute methodisms. The big topic with its 
large sweep of thought, with its comprehensive organiza- 
tion of knowledge materials, at once drops these little 
things out of sight ; for the mind is already filled and pre- 
possessed with a larger view. 

The careful planning of a single lesson for one day is a 
very profitable exercise for young and inexperienced teach- 
ers and occasionally for all teachers. Presupposing that a 
large unit of study has been first well mastered and or- 
ganized as a whole, the careful planning of one lesson ahead 
each day is an essential part of the program, especially 
with teachers in training. This phase of the subject may 
be better dealt with under the head of minor lesson planning. 

In the degree that fragmentary, miscellaneous fact- 
knowledge wastes time and effort, to that same degree the 
mastery of large, fully-organized units of study econo- 
mizes time and increases the value of effort. The big unit 
of study, in its forward march, brings on a copious and 



LARGER LESSON PLANNING 1 57 

enriching experience from which to elaborate important 
conclusions. This progressive working over and assimila- 
tion of knowledge into large, rational units of 
thought gives strength and coherency and reten- or^gaSSng* 
tiveness to what is learned. This not only intp large 

units 

economizes time in learning, but it trains children 
into right habits of thinking and of organizing knowledge. 
A good example is the study of Chicago as a trade center. 
The same number of lessons spent on one large project, 
like the Erie Canal, will furnish the child not only with a 
large quantity of important information, — more facts in 
history and geography, — but also a deeper insight into the 
meaning of the facts and beyond that a broad survey of 
their combined significance. 

A well-organized unit, completely worked out in its 
descriptive details, is a godsend to a good teacher who is 
face to face with the problem of planning a series a godsend 
of profitable lessons for a class. The teacher *° teachers 
may not have the time or the resources for gathering the 
necessary materials; but if the full treatment of such a 
big unit is already furnished, with one or two evenings' 
study she may master its content, and on this basis she 
can from time to time plan out a whole series of instructive 
lessons lasting two or three weeks. To prepare such a 
topic from the beginning, by going back to the original 
sources, might well require all her spare time for two or 
three months. Big topics Hke the Virginia Plantation and 
the Panama Canal are full proofs of the above statements, 
that is, the time-devouring effort required for the original 
preparation of such subjects, and again, their great value 
for a teacher needing well-organized material for immedi- 
ate use. In using such a well-prepared topic it is not 



158 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

necessary, therefore, that each day's lesson be worked out 
beforehand as a separate unit, but the undivided thought- 
movement of the whole has been fully studied through and 
planned for the entire series of lessons. As the large sub- 
ject develops, each day's lesson will bring on its own seg- j 
ment of the whole. 

It is not safe to assume that each teacher can collect 
and organize all this varied knowledge material for herself. 
The work of selecting central units of study and 
value to of gathering and arranging this copious inf orma- 
rkh^weu^^ tion into well-organized wholes should have been 
organized already accompHshed. This difficult and exten- 
sive preHminary work may be done beforehand 
by special experts in various studies. The teacher is now 
called upon to take this gift of complete, well-ordered 
knowledge and thoroughly master it for classroom purposes. 
This is indeed no small task, but it is exactly the thing which 
every good teacher is glad to undertake because it is the 
price he must pay in order to become a good teacher. 
Leaders in education, organizers of school courses, super- 
intendents and supervisors who make demands upon teach- 
ers should see to it that the teachers are first of all well 
suppHed with big, rich topics, elaborated and prepared 
beforehand. To say that every teacher must make all 
this preliminary preparation for himself is mere talk and 
worse. No teacher ever has done it, and no teacher ever 
can, because it is so large and extensive a labor that many 
well-equipped speciaHsts are needed to accom- 
difficuit plish it. Even in normal schools, devoted to 
pro em ^j^^ special preparation of teachers in a two-year 
course, the instructors in special subjects have not been 
able, as yet, to select and group the suitable materials 



LARGER LESSON PLANNING 1 59 

about the central topics. It is imperatively needed in every 
good training school for teachers. But the collection and 
organization of extensive and appropriate source materials 
around centers of knowledge is a very large and difficult 
task for the execution of which well- trained and richly stored 
minds are needed. Extensive libraries are also required. 

With such full units of study at hand the class teacher 
will be able to stock up with a supply of well-digested 
knowledge on each topic that constitutes a first-class prep- 
aration from the standpoint of scholarship. It is a 
wholly different quahty and assortment of knowledge from 
that found in textbooks. It is deep, rich, concrete, in- 
tensive. It is progressively organized and dynamic in its 
thought processes and it is practical, in close adjustment 
to life and reality. 

By common, universal consent, our textbooks do not hit 
the mark. They do not supply what is needed. They are 
condensed and dry and ridiculously inadequate, 
and yet they are about all the average teacher need help 
has. But we say to the teacher, "Skirmish and are left 

. . m the lurch 

about and get more material. The majority of 
teachers do not know where to look or what to look for. 
Why not get busy and supply teachers with this indis- 
pensable kind of knowledge? Perhaps it is easier to talk 
and speculate about what the average teacher ought to 
know and ought to do. As a final refuge we can fall back 
upon the trite saying that "the teacher must learn to help 
himself." But the opportunity to help themselves is now 
just what the teachers need. The big, well-organized, 
enriched units of study, furnished to the teacher, supply 
exactly this opportunity. This is at least true for those 
who are capable and willing to work. 



l6o TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

We are well aware that objection is likely to be raised 
against supplying teachers with these fully elaborated and 
organized units of study. We know also that some of 
these objectors are making poor textbooks which are 
designed to lay down for the majority of teachers both 
material and method of instruction. Moreover these 
textbooks, even the best of them, are known to be rela- 
tively meager in content, not one quarter as rich and well 
developed in content as the central units of study which 
we have been discussing. We desire, therefore, to give a 
still added emphasis to the great task of this preliminary 
selection and organization for the benefit of the teacher. 

The large, completed unit of study, expanded into a full 
treatment, organized on a fundamental line of thought, and 
enriched with adequate illustration, settles for the teacher, 
approximately, three important questions : 

First, the general scheme of organization of the whole 
A threefold subject on the basis of its fundamental idea, 
strengthen- It sets forth fully the meaning and value of this 
teacher's Central idea, and its larger relations to kindred 
^°^^ large topics in the course. 

Secondly, it has determined beforehand and broadly the 
choice and arrangement of illustrative, descriptive details 
necessary to the full illumination of the central idea. Two 
serious obstacles are thus removed from the teacher's 
path, one, the difficulty of collecting suitable original data, 
and the other, the labor of grouping wisely this rich accumu- 
lation. This arduous task has been completed before the 
work of actual teaching begins. 

Thirdly, it has decided mainly the extent and range of 
correlation with interesting topics in other studies. These 
cross-relations with other school subjects are important 



LARGER LESSON PLANNING l6l 

and illuminating. The full significance of the central 
idea cannot be brought to light without paying regard to 
these aspects. 

The strenuous effort demanded of a teacher or student 
in the struggle to organize and work out a big unit with 
full consideration of these three main points will quickly 
bring to light the difficulty and complexity of the task, 
for example, a unit of study like the framing of the consti- 
tution in 1787, the development of our post office system, 
the reading of the Merchant of Venice, the improvement 
of navigation on the Mississippi and its tributaries. Even 
much smaller topics than these just named are big under- 
takings for the expert organizer, for example, the White 
Mountains as a summer resort, fruit growing in Florida, 
Champlain's first exploring trip into New York, the old 
National Road. 

The value to the teacher of such well-organized, com- 
pleted topics is not merely in this supply of information 
on specific topics needed in the teacher's special work, 
but also in the superior standards set up for thinking and 
for organizing thought materials. 

The task of fully mastering one of these completed stud- 
ies, one of these clearly organized and fully elaborated 
projects, is found to be no small undertaking for 
the teacher. We have occasionally tried out this teacher's 
plan on a class of mature college students. When ^^^^led e 
held rigidly for a thorough knowledge of one of of the big 
these prepared topics, such mastery as any ^^®^®*^ 
teacher would need in handling it, they fall short. They 
seem to have encountered unheard-of requirements. We 
are trying to set up higher standards of full, masterly 
knowledge as a necessary preliminary to teaching. 

M 



l62 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Now it will be admitted that the complete mastery of 
the large unit of study by a thorough grasp of the three 
kinds of knowledge described above is a prime requisite 
in the teacher's preparation for the classroom work. It 
demands a distinctive and superior grade of scholarship, 
a versatile habit of thinking which can grasp large prin- 
ciples and minor details. It requires a sharp eye for facts, 
and reflective thought which can group the facts into com- 
prehensive relations. Free play of the imagination must 
be balanced by the opposite quality of accuracy with respect 
to small matters. The mastery of a big topic such as the 
Muscle Shoals Project or the use and development of great 
water powers or the growth of slavery and of the slave 
interest sets up a high standard of practical, scholarly 
thinking. 

As a guide and leader in thinking processes the teacher 

needs to be large-minded, appreciative of children, accurate 

and full in scholarship, discriminating in judg- 

The te&cher , , 

a leader in ment and entirely practical and well balanced, 
minded Such a mastery of his subject should be in the 
scholarly teacher's mind before he begins to outline one 
lesson or a series of lessons in detail — what we 
may call minor lesson planning. This well-organized 
and enriched treatment of a whole central topic is in 
itseh a basal lesson plan, not a formal, skeletonized plan, 
but a generous and well-arranged collection of lesson 
material, the real stuff required by the lessons and suitable 
to the needs of children. Give the subject itself full right 
of way to unfold in its richness and power to boys and girls 
and you have a good plan, not formal and empty, but full 
of content and meaning. The sharp curtailment of big 
topics with respect to their deeper, fuller content is the 



LARGER LESSON PLANNING 1 63 

bane of our present system of lesson planning. If outKne 
lesson plans are supposed to take the place of knowledge, 
of true, rich scholarship, they are a plain fraud. This sort 
of emptiness should be relentlessly exposed. As teachers 
we should practice plain honesty in matters of knowledge, 
and not for a pretense set up outlines. Empty, condensed, 
abstract statements and barren outlines are the Scylla 
and Charybdis for teachers to fear and avoid. 

If teachers are to be gradually trained into a wise fore- 
thought in planning lessons, they should have at hand for 
inspection and use a goodly number of these ^ ^m, 
well-prepared, completely elaborated units of trations 
study as first-class specimens of such completely 
organized topics. These things are necessary, if teachers 
are to exercise long-headed wisdom in planning out cam- 
paigns of study. On the basis of such a preliminary train- 
ing, teachers should then learn to work out such topics 
for themselves from original sources. But they should 
have time to learn how to do this, and good examples from 
the hands of more experienced workmen. 

If good lesson planning depends upon the preceding 
mastery of big units of study, fully elaborated, how are 
teachers themselves to be convinced of the full 
value of such large lesson planning ? What more Ho^ train 

tcaciisrs to 

convincing proofs could be given than first-class theconcep- 
big projects as examples? Progressive teachers largJunits? 
and recent texts show a marked tendency to 
select big units of study to be fully developed. Concen- 
tration upon these vital topics is sound in theory, but 
common practice runs mainly in the old channels with 
numerous short-circuited topics. How are teachers to 
make the transition from the old narrow track, over to 



164 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

this more liberal scheme of large lesson planning? We 
need and must have strong, clear-cut demonstrations of 
big units of study which are plainly workable. Mere the- 
oretic statements of what is desirable no longer satisfy 
teachers. They must see the ideas harnessed up to school 
studies, actual topics worked out as demonstrations of 
complete organization. We have been often told and 
have repeated the saying for a generation that ''Any 
teacher can work up these topics who has brains and in- 
dustry." We are now looking for this particular brand of 
"brains and industry. " The time has come for the theorist 
to. step asidp for a space and let the doer march to the 
front. We have a hard problem to work and we shall not 
solve it with talk, but by a direct frontal attack on the 
large objects of study. The classroom is an inexorably 
practical place and wants no shams. It demands real, 
complete topics, not pretentious and empty outlines. 

We need genuine knowledge subjects treated in a mas- 
terly way. We may first set ourselves the task of sifting 
A difficult ^^^ ^^^ school studies and of picking out the cen- 
practicai tral units. This done, we shall then be face to 
pro em ^^^^ ^.^^ ^^^ laborious and yet inspiring task 
of collecting and arranging an abundant and enriching 
knowledge around these focal points. To lay out the 
original plan for a big teaching unit in a large way, to col- 
lect from reliable, original sources the necessary data, 
and to shape up this source material into a first-class 
descriptive treatment is the work of a thoughtful, scholarly, 
practical organizer. It would be a curious and unaccount- 
able mistake to throw this heavy task back upon mere 
beginners in the art of teaching. The all-round, finished 
expert in educational work, at the end of a long, rich experi- 



LARGER LESSON PLANNING 1 65 

ence, will find himself none too well prepared for this seri- 
ous and responsible undertaking. 

It would be a far-seeing plan to commission some of our 
ablest teachers, of broad scholarship and ripe experience, 
and specialists in the different subjects, to give ^ . ^ 

, Set trsined, 

their uninterrupted time and labor to this honor- experienced 
able task. It would be theirs to collect and tf^j,^^*^ 
focus this copious and instructive knowledge upon these 
upon the central units and to exhibit the results 
before our eyes, objectively, as it were, in the shape of 
complete monographs suitable for classroom use. Let 
this process of selecting and organizing topics continue 
till we get clearly before us a goodly number of safe and 
manifest demonstrations of the better modes of organiza- 
tion. For the lack of such examples upon which young 
teachers can develop their notions of orderly arrangement, 
we are not making much progress in the art of organiza- 
tion and of lesson planning. On the contrary all our 
young teachers are being systematically trained on models 
of organization which are weak in the two funda- xwo weak 
mentals of sound thinking and good teaching. ^p<**^ 
These models fail first to emphasize the main centers of 
thought, and secondly, they are markedly deficient in 
the intensive, enriching elements which give the concrete 
background to central ideas. Our teachers are following 
such models as they have in Keu of better which they ought 
to have. Even a few masterpieces of treatment and 
organization, if appropriately wrought out for use in the 
grades, would awaken and hearten teachers with a sense 
of reality. If we could see a few strong teachers working 
out such units in a masterly way, others would feel like 
undertaking it. 



1 66 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

In other vocations, requiring trained experts, the leaders 
are accustomed to accept the challenge to work out and 

deliver masterpieces of their art. The architect 
tions are elaborates his plan and supervises the construc- 
^acticai ^^^^ ^^ ^ Sreat building. The surgeon of high 

repute goes into the operating room and per- 
forms a skillful piece of surgery and then discusses it with 
his students. The lawyer carries his case through all the 
intricacies and vicissitudes of court procedure. The agri- 
cultural expert demonstrates his plan of cultivating corn 
on the experiment farm. The statesman accepts office 
and tries out practical schemes of poHtical reform. The 
poet has even the boldness to publish a new poem to run the 
gauntlet of the critics. The teacher of poetics seldom does ! 
The master among teachers should be one who has 
acquired the art of producing these complete, well-balanced 

units of knowledge suitable for use in classrooms. 
hTthirart^ He accepts the challenge also to demonstrate the 
organizing full treatment of these topics in the classroom. 
nTeded^ Every teacher should develop this kind of power 

and the sooner the better. But what is the 
process of teacher-training through which this ability and 
expertness are to be acquired? Certainly not by random, 
haphazard methods, not by imitation of faulty and wrong 
methods, but by a systematic training in the study and 
use of the best available illustrations. 

In training young teachers we should gather together and 

make a study of completely and thoroughly 
training on Organized study units. In the mastery, discus- 

w^ units °^ ^^^^' ^^^ ^^^ ^^ these, the novices will become 

f amihar with the principles of good organization 

and of larger lesson planning. On this basis of experi- 



\ 



LARGER LESSON PLANNING 1 67 

ence in dealing with such topics they can enter later upon 
similar efforts at planning and organization. It is a diffi- 
cult art and one into which the developing teacher grows 
step by step in his progress toward the ideal. 

What we need at present is a cooperative effort among 
experienced teachers to produce good models of well- 
organized knowledge and lesson plans, especially with ref- 
erence to intermediate and grammar grades. We should 
set up high standards of practical, professional skill ex- 
pressed in the tangible form of complete monographs on 
units of study suitable to the character and understanding 
of children. 

Two conclusions may be drawn from this discussion of 
larger lesson planning. 

We shall not get much first-class, large-minded planning 
of instruction until our knowledge materials are cast into 
the larger mold of big, comprehensive type-study projects. 
The reorganization of the knowledge materials of school 
studies into these masterly units is a task for experienced 
teachers and ripened scholars. 

If children are to become self-reliant thinkers they should 
have a chance to encounter in each of the important thought 
studies a series of these large, developing problem-projects. 
They should take up into their thinking the full energy 
of one of these purposive ideas which pushes forward against 
obstacles to a full realization, gathering and organizing 
abundant and fruitful knowledge in its natural course. 



CHAPTER X 

LARGE TEACHING UNITS OR PROJECTS A BROAD 
BASIS FOR INSTRUCTION 

A LARGE topic which is a progressive organization of 

valuable knowledge into a unit of purposive thinking may 

prove a natural basis for classroona instruction. 

A standard q-j^g whole working out of the Erie Canal Proj- 

unit IS , ... 

based on a ect is such a unit of progressive thinking. We 
procesr^^ have long needed such standard units of knowl- 
edge as a ground for classroom instruction. 
Industrial and social projects in the active world and 
great natural phenomena illustrate this. One of the big 
steel works at Pittsburgh displays a monstrous energy 
pushing on through a definite, planned process of reducing 
crude ores, first to pig iron, then to steel ingots, and finally 
to the special forms used for constructive purposes in 
bridges, machinery, and shipbuilding. This ongoing 
process, as a complete, rational unit of effort, supplies the 
basis for a plan of deHberate study. A cyclonic storm 
treated as a whole is such a unit. In describing the course 
of a cyclonic storm as diagramed in the weather maps, 
we think the atmospheric forces organized into a vast whirl- 
ing movement which distributes rain, winds, and sunshine 
over a large area of the continent according to a plan that 
can be foretold. A story like Theseus, who was endowed 
with the purpose of slaying the Minotaur and of freeing 
his own people, has in it such an energetic thought-move- 

i68 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 1 69 

ment which works out its purpose in a unit of effort. The 
Hf e history of a thousand-year pine is such a growing, and, 
as it were, purposeful, process of combining material forces 
to produce a typical tree structure. A big topic should 
have in it this propulsive power of a strong organizing 
idea and thus can furnish a basal plan for the development 
of rational thought. 

The energy embodied in a growing, purposive idea is 
often shown in the work of an inventor. His mind becomes 
absorbed in the struggle to realize his idea. The 
same is true of an author prepossessed with a naiic^' 
purpose which his mind is bent upon reaHzing. process is a 

^ ^ .1111 working unit 

Dickens is said to have been m an absorbed and of effort and 
highly energized mental state while composing o^n^ethod 
his story of the Christmas Carol, Every big 
topic ought to generate in teacher and pupil this progressive 
impulse to work out and turn into use some idea or prin- 
ciple. Historical projects and many also in geography 
and science have within them such a natural, powerful 
impulse, the response to some fundamental need or push. 
The westward movement of population in the United 
States, illustrated by the gold seekers in '49, demanded 
more and more territory and gave an almost settled char- 
acter to our aggressive westward movement. A subject 
that develops and organizes its materials in this way pro- 
vides its own method. The natural growth of the topic 
creates its own process. The spirit of freedom for self- 
government in the early colonies was such an aggressive 
force. Burke calls it a "fierce" spirit for which he was 
willing to make allowances. It organized action and 
produced important effects. (See Chapter III.) 
The thoughts of teachers and of children are quick to 



lyo TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

catch the drift, and move effectively along the track of 
these impulsive, energetic ideas till they have run their 
course and have worked out their legitimate and intended 
results. Such a topic constitutes a working unit of effort 
exerted along a well-determined course. When these 
dynamic thought processes are big and comprehensive in 
their organization of knowledge, they furnish an ideal 
basis for self-reHant classroom study. 

We can estimate the difhculties to be overcome in such 
an effort and the worth of the results. This is clearly 
proved in practical projects, such as the building of a rail- 
road, the boring of a mountain tunnel, the planning of a 
battle, and the building of a dam for the development of a 
water power. The practical schemes that are worked out by 
man's ingenuity and labor are of this aggressive, construc- 
tive, almost creative, character, furnishing strong, objective 
illustrations of the very kind of projects that are employing 
men's activities and satisfying their needs. (See Chapter I.) 

By transferring these outside, pragmatic projects into 
the school to be used as substantial parts of its course, 
The demand we satisfy one of the main requirements of our 
for problems recent pedagogy, the demand for problems, for 
real, practical problems. It has been claimed that the best 
kind of thinking is that required in the solution of problems, 
because this method pits the mind of the student against 
difficulties. It forces some degree of self -r chance and inde- 
pendence in thinking. The problem calls for a collection 
of data and for a focusing of attention upon a difficult 
situation until some mode of escape from the dilemma 
comes into view, as when Washington escaped from Corn- 
wallis at Trenton. By selecting the projects undertaken 
by engineers, explorers, and promoters in the industries 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 17I 

or in enterprises for social betterment, the problems of life 
become the problems of the school. The children are set 
to thinking these problems through, under Hfe conditions, 
meeting the difficulties as they arise or have arisen. The 
plans that were projected and later followed out 
in constructing the Panama Canal are put ^^^if^^ 
before children with sufficient data to make them become the 
serve as problems. Children identify themselves ^^e school* 
with the aims and efforts of the canal builders. 
In a way, they sense those experiences in their own minds. 
The adventurous pioneer narratives of early explorers like 
Fremont, Lewis and Clark, Boone, and Champlain, illus- 
trate many such trying situations where children can feel 
the real pressure of the hard conditions under which 
these men struggled and achieved their successes. 

A large, practical undertaking organized on the basis of 
life experience is found frequently to be not a single prob- 
lem, but a whole chain of problems. It is a peculiar and 
striking quality of these projects from life that they exhibit 
a close succession of trying situations. In life men are 
always competing and struggling against opposing odds. 
Problems are in the natural order. Some new and diffi- 
cult plan is being worked out, Hke the laying of the Atlantic 
cable, and it meets with obstacles, and even bitter opposi- 
tion. As the children follow the struggle and witness the 
opposing and discouraging facts, the problem becomes 
acute and real. In such cases the teacher should not be 
in haste to relieve the tension and to explain the means 
used to secure a favorable outcome. Let the children 
struggle with this situation and devise means of escape. 
They will do stronger thinking and often surprise us with 
the shrewdness and aptness of their suggestions. 



172 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Most historical and scientific movements as well as indus- 
trial enterprises are of this problem-setting and problem- 
„. , . ^ solving character. Every new tariff is an effort 

Historic and ° . -^ 

economic by Congress to readjust the tariff schedule to 
pro ems ^-^^ changed conditions and sentiments of the 
people — a hard and complicated problem. Every in- 
coming legislature attacks new tasks in legislation. New 
social and economic conditions have arisen and the old 
problems of taxation and public improvement, of repre- 
sentation and of woman suffrage, must be solved again. 
In other words, society is all the time setting up new aims 
and working at their solution. The school may well imi- 
tate this experimental way of doing things and work out 
again the same problems that society has had to deal with 
before. With this preparation in problem work the chil- 
dren, when grown to men and women, will be the better 
able to cope with the old problems in their new dress. 
Every inventor, as Whitney with his cotton gin, or Morse 
with his telegraph, is trying to devise a new method or 
machine for doing an important piece of work, that is, he is 
trying to solve an old problem in a new way. The electric 
motor, as we have it, is the outcome of a long series of prob- 
lems or inventions succeeding one another in a natural 
order. Inventors are problem-setters and problem-solvers. 
Children in the schools should have a chance to press 
up sharply against these problems and at least try their 
wits at a solution. The facts and conditions 
lemffthe which bring on a problem must be clearly pre- 
chud'sop- sen ted and then a chance offered and a definite 

porttinity 

stimulus given to think out a solution. Real 
life is a world of problems and children may well learn to 
grapple with just such situations. This is accomplished 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 173 

not by setting up unreal, artificial problems, foreign to 
life and reaHty, but by using the workings of history and 
the developing projects of real life in commerce, m social 
and industrial affairs, as examples, and as nearly as feasible 
in the original form and feature of those very problems. 

Such actual projects worked out with fullness give us a 
dupHcate of Hfe and a feeUng for the reaUties of Ufe which 
constitute a sound basis for further study along the same 
line. Real Hfe works out all its projects in the concrete. 
It teaches by example. Then on the basis of such examples 
the school may go on to build up its broader concepts. 

The large projects in the industrial world are representa- 
tive. Study one great newspaper plant, including its ways 
of collecting, printing, and sending out news, p^^^^^^^^^ 
and vou have the idea and plan upon which all habits of 

'' Tr> • ck society as 

metropolitan newspapers operate. J^xamme one objects of 
large department store and you grasp the de- t^Jg^«^ 
partment store idea which all practice. Study 
the methods of a large city hotel and hotel Ufe in general 
is easily interpreted. A short cut to a clear and full 
understanding of the important habits or ways of doing 
things in our modern society is obtained through a careful 
and adequate study of a few main situations. Society 
performs its chief functions for the world by a few habitual 
ways of doing things. This is easily demonstrated, — the 
travel habit on raihoads, the reading habit of newspapers 
and magazines, the dress habit, the three-meals-a-day 
habit, the church-going habit, the city-building habit, the 
shipbuilding habit, the poUtical election habit, and the 
school-going habit. Study a few of these chief habits thor- 
oughly in the concrete, and you understand the ways of 
modern life. 



174 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

We were just saying that the best place to begin these 
studies is life itself, that is, certain big sections or units of 

life-activity where a typical process is demon- 
Life itself strated. Society is kind enough to teach all 
the"miits of ^^^ great lessons objectively and typically and 
study the school has only to reconstruct these object 

lessons on a suitable scale. 
The school by its instruction can also do another very 
important thing. It can point out other similar objects 

and demonstrations, that is, it can repeat and 

The school , •.♦,.• i i 

can expand enlarge its mstructions and make comparisons 
the teach- until the specific lesson grows into a rule or gen- 
eral principle, a truth of wide application. This 
is known among the pedagogues as inductive-deductive 
thinking. The school of life teaches by induction by oft 
repeating its object lessons, and by deduction or constant 
appHcation. The school, however, while imitating life can 
do better than Hfe. It can make this process more thought- 
ful, more reflective, and more comprehensive. It can teach 
people how to get the higher thought values out of experi- 
ence. By studying these types taken from everyday 
experience the school is following the natural order, is 
strengthening and intensifying the teachings of the real 
world. It is practicing a strict economy by dealing only 
with those necessary, fundamental types in which life itself 
sets the chief store. 

The inductive-deductive method of the school finds its 
basis in the inductive-deductive method of Hfe, and in the 
derived results which Hfe has accumulated. For these 
results are not abstractions, but object lessons and ongoing 
processes, still actively developing and representative of 
the forces and institutions at work in society. Back of 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 175 

the present steam engine is the series of inventions by which 
the steam engine has been brought to its present efl&ciency. 
Back of the model scientific dairy are the history 
and processes by which the dairy has been "^^^ method 
developed toward perfection. The same is true comes the 
with all the fundamental processes of our pres- Se*schooi 
ent-day industry and of political life. They 
have been growing and are still continuously devel- 
oping. The school should swing its work into these fun- 
damental movements, appropriate them, and put the 
children in position to keep up and move on with them into 
the future. This is education in life, through Hfe, for life. 
The inductive-deductive thought-movement is based on 
practical grounds of historical development as well as on 
psychological grounds. Indeed these practical demonstra- 
tions are the more convincing. 

The large topic favors intensive work upon each impor- 
tant unit of study. It sets a high estimate upon one of 
these topics and is willing to spend and be spent 
in bringing it to a complete realization. An unit requires 
elaborate and fruitful treatment of such a topic *^ intensive 

^ , treatment 

as the Mississippi River, or the purchase of Louisi- 
ana, or the coming of the Puritans to New England, or 
the growth of a city like New York, is worthy of our fullest 
effort. To do a thing of this sort well results in what we 
may call a masterpiece of organized knowledge. The 
better elements of scholarship and the better modes of 
thinking come into play. There is nothing superficial 
or fragmentary in such an effort. It sets up standards 
of knowledge and of organization of subject matter which 
are of supreme value. To work out such topics success- 
fully sets up a genuine standard of craftsmanship, and such 



176 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

standards are indispensable if education is to hit the mark 
instead of shooting at random. 

To scatter attention over a multitude of subjects, to 

get a smattering of this or that, to memorize and soon 

forget miscellaneous bunches of facts, is to spend 

uS^ a*^ the time and go through the motions of teaching 

complete ^3^^ ^q make little permanent progress. Every 

achievement . ^ x- o j 

complete topic adequately worked out in the 

class should make a strong and permanent impression, 
should be a real achievement, known and felt to be such 
by the children. They are entitled to the best things, 
but these are not to be had in the loose, helter-skelter fash- 
ion. We should learn to centralize the thought of children 
upon conspicuously important topics, objectively large 
and clear, intensively rich and fruitful. 

The intensive treatment of a large topic by which it 
takes on this richer meaning and broader scope of inter- 
pretation requires two stages. First is the 
descriptive gathering together and organization of the con- 
^*^® Crete and descriptive materials which give a 

setting and background to the main idea, as in the study 
of Washington. A study of the Rhine River requires a 
picturesque and descriptive treatment, reenforce'd by 
photographs or stereographs of castles, ruins, vineyards, 
fortresses, the Lorelei, the old walled towns, boats and 
bridges, monuments, mountain slopes, etc. These in turn 
are made more lively by local legends and stories and his- 
tory. Enlarged maps of the Rhine shores add much to 
the definiteness and character of the whole course of the 
journey along the river. Some particular castle like the 
Heidelberg Schloss is studied in detail, with the entire 
plan of the old courts, walls, and adjacent parks and 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 1 77 

grounds, with interior views and the various styles of archi- 
tecture, the towers, the chapel, the great hall and cooking 
rooms, the moat and drawbridges, the big wine cask, etc. 
By these various means we seek to reproduce the detailed 
experience of the real sightseer, who goes curiously among 
such places. If the class is stud3dng Yellowstone Park, 
we expect to feature these picturesque and illustrative 
phases : geysers, canyons, lakes, hot springs, etc. Like- 
wise in the story of Lewis and Clark in 1804-1805, the ex- 
citing narrative of hardship and adventure taken from the 
diary of the explorers is introduced with pictures and 
maps. The Geographical Magazine with its superb pictures 
illustrates this one phase of geography study. Many of 
our textbooks in geography and geographical readers 
contribute richly to this pictorial mode of illustration. 
It has been proposed to use moving pictures extensively 
for just such purposes, and if these pictures are arranged 
and adapted to the subject matter to be illustrated they 
will serve well. In making an exhibit of a cattle ranch 
or a gold mine a similar fullness of description with pictures 
and drawings or diagrams or maps is required to allow the 
full meaning to appear. Biographies of explorers, of 
inventors, of generals, of statesmen are made fruitful and 
valuable by narrative or anecdote and personal traits and 
individual experiences. 

We may say that every important topic in any subject 
requires this descriptive background, this fullness of the 
concrete and objective. The more important the central 
idea, the more it demands a fine assortment and proper 
grouping of these attendant circumstances. The king 
and queen without their court cannot play their part. 
The idea without its setting is bare and meaningless. 



1 78 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

In the second place, a large topic allows time and ma- 
terial for reflection, for thoughtful retrospect and com- 
s condi parison, for a study of causes and results, 
thereflec- for noting Strong resemblances and contrasts, 
ve s age ^^ important object or central figure must be 
viewed from many sides or at least from several angles. 
Mount Shasta presents widely different aspects as seen 
from different sides. The ocean in repose and the ocean 
in storm are widely contrasted and both worth seeing. 
The bigness and importance of a topic are measured by 
the variety and quality of its important relations, by the 
amount of quiet thinking it can generate. Even to group 
and organize the concrete material that belongs to a large 
topic requires time for thought. A large iron and steel 
producing factory at Pittsburgh is extensive and complex 
in its general plan. A description of it involves a series of 
furnaces and mill processes; a succession of workmen, 
managers, and inspectors. But when this whole picture 
is complete the relations of a large central steel plant to 
the ore mines in Minnesota, and to the land and lake 
transportation, to the coal mines which supply fuel, and 
to limestone quarries, supplying lime for the flux of ores, 
and again, the distribution of the finished steel to building 
firms in cities, to steel-working machine shops, and to rail- » 
roads over the country and in foreign lands, — this reflec- 
tive process leads on and on till the steel works at Pitts- 
burgh are intimately related to commerce, to large house 
construction, to shipbuilding, to machine shops, to rail- 
roads, and to all the industries on a large scale. 

This reflective process is a means of developing the basal 
idea in a big topic till it interprets some phase of industrial 
Kfe or some historical movement in a comprehensive, 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 1 79 

even world-embracing fashion. The steel-producing busi- 
ness is one of the biggest enterprises in modern industrial 
affairs. To study a large steel plant at Pitts- 
burgh descriptively and then to compare it with conquering 
other like works at Pittsburgh, at Birmingham, ^**^® 
at Gary, at Cleveland, at Chicago, at Baltimore, is to 
comprehend the bigness and importance of the bilHon 
dollar steel trust, as it has been called, and the significance 
of this business for the whole country. To continue the 
comparison, later, with steel production in England, in 
Belgium, or in Germany, is to take a broad world view 
of this business. To note that less progressive nations 
like Turkey, China, and Persia are undeveloped in steel 
production is to set up one of the important standards of 
progress and efficiency among modern nations, a stand- 
ard upon which we may measure the present status of 
nations. 

The second important stage in all big topics is this stage 
of expansion and reflection by which we make extensive 
comparisons, trace wide-reaching causes, and draw im- 
portant conclusions for the future. This makes edu- 
cation in the school a thought-developing, world-building 
process. 

In the selection and arrangement of topics for the entire 
curriculum, we shall find that fundamental ideas develop 
continuously through the course. A big idea 
works out and welds together a chain of large types with 
units or types. As this series of kindred types continuity of 

, thought 

develops, comparisons are set up between them. 
Through such comparisons and reviews a close connection 
between these kindred topics is organized and maintained 
until the whole series works itself out as one consistent 



l8o TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

line of thought. The establishment of a connecting link- 
age between these successive units is the chief means of 
developing that continuity of thought which we prize so 
highly but seldom get. This continuous growth of a 
single important concept through a succession of large 
types contributes to an extended organization of knowl- 
edge throughout the school course. If, for example, the 
Nile River is being studied, a comparison is made between 
it and the Mississippi and other famiHar American rivers, 
then with the Rhine, the Danube, and perhaps the Indus 
and Yangtse and other rivers so as to discover striking 
Hkenesses and contrasts. The Nile has great floods which 
spread out over the flood plain; so has the Mississippi 
River. The floods along the Mississippi, however, are kept 
under control by levees so as not to inundate the flood 
plain. Why this difference, this peculiar contrast? The 
Nile River rises in great lakes; so does the St. Lawrence. 
Compare them. The Nile has an extensive delta ; so have 
the Mississippi, the Rhine, and the Ganges, but not the 
St. Lawrence. Why? The Nile has a series of great 
cataracts. What has the Mississippi or Missouri or St. 
Lawrence to compare to this ? The Nile is a great historic 
river. What of the Mississippi, the Rhine, the Hudson, 
the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus, and the Yangste? 
The Nile traverses an arid and desert region; compare 
it with the Colorado ; contrast it with the Amazon. The 
English have established a great irrigation dam and con- 
trolling works at Assuan on the lower Nile ; compare this 
with the irrigation projects on the Snake, the Columbia, 
the Rio Grande; also compare with the irrigation along 
the Indus and the Ganges in India, and with the Grand 
Canal in China. 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS l8l 

Such comparison leads to a thoughtful and surprisingly 
fruitful review. It brings into prominence important 
facts not thought of before. It impresses the organizing 
mind with notable contrasts and likenesses and reviews , 
stimulates to an explanation of the causes of differences. 
Such reviews sift out and organize knowledge. They do 
more than merely repeat facts. They call for reasons. 
They work out general notions by discovering similar 
causes producing Uke results, and striking differences 
due to recognizable causes. In other words, such reviews 
generate thought of the best quaHty. The old-fashioned 
static review, which goes over the same facts again and 
again, and by sheer drill and repetition tries to fix them in 
memory, is a poor and feeble instrument of study, lacking 
in thought and wasteful of time and energy, a mind-dulling 
rather than a thought-producing process. 

By following this plan of a developing series of types in 
which all later topics are regularly compared with similar 
topics previously studied in the same series, we 

. . Construc- 

can dispense largely with mere static reviews, tive, organ- 
with tedious repetitions and drills in which no ""^e'®^®^s 
new ideas appear. Many of our courses of study show a 
large consumption of time in these dry and unprofitable 
reviews. Such comparing reviews on the contrary are full 
of interest and of new interpretations. Facts thus organized 
do not drop easily from the memory. They have been 
tied up in too many significant connections with valuable 
centers of thought to be lost. By this growing and organ- 
izing process knowledge becomes a permanent possession. 
It becomes identified with the very structure and organiza- 
tion of the mind itself. The common complaint that 
children forget three fourths of what they learn is a sharp 



1 82 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

criticism of our whole method of study. If knowledge is 
gained by a process of growth and organization there is 
no reason why the important things learned should be for- 
gotten. We naturally and properly forget those facts that 
have no holding quaHties, no permanent interpretative 
value. It is quite customary to admit that children forget 
quickly the far greater part of what they so tediously 
learn. This is not a necessary result if knowledge is prop- 
erly organized and assimilated as it comes into the mind, 
if we are constantly looking back and reviewing by thought- 
ful comparison, if we find a Hfe basis and a Hfe connection 
for our thoughts. The static reviews that are sometimes 
provided in history and geography are very blunt instru- 
ments of study. They produce a feeble result in a slow 
and fumbling way, with a forced and tiresome or jaded 
effort. They accomplish a minimum result with a maxi- 
mum expenditure of effort, and the results fade away into 
forge tfulness. 

It has been demonstrated in a variety of large topics in 
history and geography that a vigorous continuity of thought 
on the basis of big stepping stones of knowledge can be 
worked out and that experience thus organized becomes 
the strong and enduring framework of a child's knowledge. 

Much has been said about the correlation of studies, 

their intercommunication, and their mutual support. 

The large unit of study which provides for a 
Vital rela- • i i i • r 

tionsbe- many-sided and extensive treatment of a topic 

tween jg inevitably a strong agency in establishing 

SliICUcS 

close and numerous relations between studies. 
Big topics do not respect the artificial boundaries between 
studies. The roots and branches of every commanding 
unit spread out into several so-called studies. A good 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 1 83 

history story like Magellan or La Salle is a combination of 
history, geography, and science and without effort always 
a fruitful field for language. Four great studies come 
together and enrich and support one another in such a 
topic. The biography of a man like Franklin is a still 
broader and richer combination. Literature, science, 
history, language, social and industrial projects, states- 
manship, all fields of human interest are brought together 
and closely identified with his personal interests and 
character. 

Practical topics which take firm hold on life have this 
strong combination of materials, this wide range of real 
and essential connections. The farmer, the 
lawyer, the merchant, the banker, the inventor topics are 
shows this wide reach and variety of interests in always 

•' ^ ^ many-sided 

his business. The newspaper deals with this 
universal range and intercommunion of topics. Only 
the schoolmaster thinks he is free to limit himself narrowly 
in the treatment of subjects. He sometimes sets up small 
boundaries between subjects and shuts himself and the 
children almost within prison walls. Robinson Crusoe 
is a man who deals with all phases of fife, geography and 
climate, nature and agriculture, the Bible and other Ht- 
erature, savages and civilized. Crusoe is a good study 
for children because of the wide range of his interests and 
projects. This is true with Hiawatha, Ulysses, and GulU- 
ver. Big, fruitful topics are far-reaching in their relations 
and in treating them we should take time to work out and 
evaluate these connections. Such topics thus gain in 
breadth and fullness and, so long as the central unity of 
each topic is maintained, there is little danger of looseness 
and shallowness. The correlation of studies will there- 



1 84 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

fore take good care of itself if we provide the right sort of 
big topics for study and learn how to treat them in a full, 
expansive, organizing way. 

A standard and oft-recurring criticism of our studies is 

that they become stereotyped. They tend strongly to grow 

j&xed into a so-called logical outline of facts, a 

Criticism of 1 » c r . » i • • i 

a formal brief summary of essentials or principles express- 
outuneof jj^pr the logical conclusions of the adult mind. 

studies o o 1.1 

These are memorized and wrought into the men- 
tal habits of children by a process of reviews and drills. 
The objection to all this from the side of educational critics 
and reformers is that these matured judgments and sum- 
maries of the adult mind do not fit the growing child mind. 
They may express the final results of the process of educa- 
tion, but they do not fit into the developing process itself. 
They are not psychological. They are arbitrarily imposed 
upon the child's mind by an outside authority and they 
do not fit his way of thinking and his natural mental move- 
ments. To put on one of these ideas is Hke the small boy 
trying to wear his father's greatcoat. It is grotesque. 

Our present mode of teaching is particularly exposed 
to this criticism. In some of our large, well-established 

city and state systems, a prevailing and strongly 
Satic^fixed ^^^^^^ uniformity of material and method has 
outline and been worked out and stereotyped. Our present 
essentials Curriculum, overcrowded with studies (new and 

old) , with a wide range and variety of topics in 
all studies, is forced more and more into an outline, a sum- 
mary of essentials, a digest. This digest becomes in time 
a sort of sacred thing which teachers call the ^'minimum 
essentials" of a course. Such a static, immobile course 
loses what elasticity it may originally have and tends 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 1 8$ 

strongly to become a fixed routine for both teachers and 
pupils. 

A course of study made up of a few well-selected, large 
units of subject matter, rich and copious in treatment, can- 
not be reduced to a mere outline, cannot be com- _. , _ , 

Big, fruitful 

pressed into a dull and lifeless summary. Such topics pre- 
big, expanded topics, strong in stimulating, ^^*^^^ 
concrete thought matter, are not a good basis for cramping 
mechanical methods. Complete units of study 
well wrought out are like first-class stories and poems, 
such as the King of the Golden River, the Pied Piper of 
Eamelin, Robinson Crusoe, and Robert Bruce. They are 
so real, so vital and intense in their concrete impersona- 
tions that there is, fortunately, no way of reducing them 
to skeleton outlines. A teacher must be unusually dull 
and stupid who manages to take the Hfe and spirit out of 
such stories and make them dull and tiresome. It is this 
stimulating and inspiring quality of big, fruitful topics which 
we wish to preserve against all encroachment of mechani- 
cal and routine methods. The course of study as we 
actually know it in many schools shows a clear tendency 
to become stiff and cramped and formal; not so much 
because teachers and superintendents desire such a result, 
but because the pressure of numerous studies and a con- 
stantly increasing number of topics inevitably force us 
into a summarizing method. 

Now as to the freedom and independence of the teacher 
in dealing with big topics! Such an enriched, fruitful 
topic developing a strong, central line of thought 
and spreading out in important cross-connec- and freedom 
tions throws the door wide open for a large free- *^*®*^^^s 
dom of method in the details of teaching. In the first 



l86 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

place, a richly concrete and descriptive knowledge, having 
valuable connections and correlations with other subjects, 
tempts strongly to variety and individuaHty in mode of 
treatment. A Hve teacher can hardly handle such a many- 
sided subject twice in the same way. While the main 
progress of thought develops along a definite and well- 
defined route, discussion, question, and individual inter- 
pretation are free and many-sided. The one thing the 
teacher should hold to is the natural, organic growth and 
sequence of thought, and in big topics this central, growing 
thought stands out so conspicuously that it commands 
attention and soon brings the wanderer back from too 
much side-stepping. The depth and variety of thought 
in the liberal treatment of. a large topic forbids a narrow 
routine of method. 

It is difficult to see how the teacher can lose her freedom 
and reduce the descriptive parts of one of these interesting, 
instructive topics to a severe formal drill. Some teachers 
doubtless have an unusual ability in putting a damper 
upon interesting and vital topics, but this can hardly be 
assigned as a reason for dropping out fruitful, instructive, 
and well-developed topics. Like a story of Robin Hood, 
or Sinhad the Sailor, or Gulliver, a growing, expanding 
subject awakens interest and sets the thoughts in motion. 
Nor can such a topic run the teacher and pupils into a 
blind hole from which there is no exit. The topic develops 
more and more into light and freedom, and expands into 
its full meaning. 

In the later expansion of one of these large topics through 
comparison and wider thought relations both teacher and 
children are set to thinking on a higher level in an inde- 
pendent way. Compare the delta mouth of the Mississippi 



INSTRUCTION BASED ON LARGE UNITS 1 87 

and its shallow, obstructed passages with the broad, deep 
estuary at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Why this 
striking difference in our two great rivers? 
Such questions cannot be answered through thinking 
memory drills. They call for an explanation of °^ f ^^°^^ 
the causes. They open the door to freedom of 
thought and originahty of treatment, to investigation of 
facts and to inquiry into larger data. The commerce of 
the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence is badly ob- 
structed at the very center by the huge Falls of Niagara, 
and yet the Mississippi, with no falls and unlimited navigable 
waters, has much less shipping than the Great Lakes. 
Why this result? Such comparisons and contrasts set up 
new trains of thought. They discover and intensify mean- 
ings. The reasoning processes involved in these large 
topics demand deliberation in finding causes and in weigh- 
ing and measuring values on the basis of definite standards. 
There is a continuous thoughtful development and ongoing 
organization of knowledge materials. The discussion of 
such points develops freedom of thought and a versatile 
power of readjustment to new facts and conditions. These 
larger units of instruction, when once fully developed 
and rounded out, become in time important standards for 
the measurement of later topics and series of topics. How 
can these growing topics be handled at all without doing 
considerable thinking, without developing freedom and 
self-reHance in teachers? 

For progressive teachers the large units of study furnish 
an opportunity. Each year as one of these topics is taught 
again it can be further modified, elaborated, and enriched. 
The reference and source books suggested in connection 
with each big topic open up kindred but new and develop- 



1 88 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

ing fields of knowledge for supplementary study. Still 
other reference books, maps, and illustrative materials can 

be collected and organized into the treatment 
of bigTopics of the subject. The chief idea at the basis of 
from year to ^]^g topic is a growing one, operative in the world 

on a large scale and all the time modifying and 
enlarging its scope and influence in practical affairs. It is 
indeed a world topic based on a constructive principle in 
human experience. The steady pursuit of such growing 
topics from year to year opens an opportunity for larger 
freedom and effectiveness. It means professional growth 
and independence of the best sort. On the other hand, a 
static course of study, consisting of a given set of facts 
and formulae, to be memorized and drilled in, stops growth 
in the teacher and leads with certainty to a more or less 
fixed mechanical routine. 

The conclusion that may be drawn from this entire 
discussion is that the large, elaborately organized teaching 

unit furnishes a sound basis for classroom in- 

Conclusion . i i <• 

struction. It lays down a general plan for a 
scholarly and efficient treatment of important subjects 
in full accord with the recognized principles of good teach- 
ing. Without some such matured plan for the intensive 
treatment of the central units of study, instruction scatters 
and runs to waste or it follows dried-up channels. 

For a complete illustration see the Panama Canalj in 
Type Studies and Lesson Plans, published at George Pea- 
body College. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 

Outline 

1. The Rain Belt and the Dry Belt. 

2. Government Irrigation and the Law of 1902. 

3. The Salt River Valley. Water Supply. 

4. The Government Survey. Location of Dam and Lake. 

5. A Bird's-eye View of the Valley. 

6. Remote Location of the Dam. The Canyon Road. 

7. The Preliminary Problems, Cement Mill, Sawmill, and Power 

Plant. 

8. Construction of the Roosevelt Dam. 

9. The Granite Reef or Diversion Dam. 

10. The Two Large Trunk Canals. 

11. How Water Is Brought to the Fields. 

12. Truck Farming and Fruit Growing, Alfalfa, etc. 

13. Large Expense to Settlers in the First Years. 

14. Size and Cost of the Salt River Project. 

15. Large Western Rivers Used for Irrigation. 

16. The Minnedoka and Twin Falls Projects. 

17. The Shoshone and Rio Grande Projects. 

18. Salt Lake. The Truckee- Carson Project. 

19. A Fundamental Type with Wide Variations. 

20. The High Mountains and River Systems. 

21. The Demand for Intelligent, Thrifty Settlers. 

22. The Reclamation Law of 1902. Need of Government Control. 

23. Important Agencies in Developing Irrigation. 

24. Irrigation by Pumping from Wells. 

25. Irrigating Rice Fields in the Southern States. 

26. Future Extent and Importance of Irrigation. 

27. Egypt and the Nile Floods. The Assuan Dam. 

28. Irrigation in India. China. Peru and Mexico. 

189 



igO TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Those of us who Hve in regions of abundant rainfall 
do not realize that large parts of our own country are either 
deserts or without sufhcient rain to produce crops. In 
the eastern half of the United States we depend upon the 
natural rainfall to supply moisture for growing crops. 
But in the dry western regions water is often drawn from 
rivers and led by ditches out upon the dry land to make it 
productive. 

Even in the rainy belt we sometimes have dry, hot 
seasons which scorch the growing crops and do much 
damage. Our gardeners, to protect themselves against 
such losses, sometimes water their fields from tanks or 
reservoirs by means of ditches, or they have overhead 
pipes which spray the plants in the field. In cities and 
towns, during hot, dry weather, we often water our lawns 
and gardens. The farmers, however, whose fields are 
too large to be watered, try to preserve the moisture in the 
soil by pulverizing the top layer of earth, by frequent plow- 
ing or harrowing, thus preventing evaporation. But in 
dry or partly desert countries, it is necessary to construct 
expensive systems of irrigation for watering the land. 

In recent years the government of the United States has 
undertaken a number of great projects for irrigating large 
tracts of arid land in the West. During previous years 
many irrigating ditches had been taken out along the 
rivers of arid states by farmers and by smaller and larger 
private ditch companies. But there were some great 
reclamation projects that required such a vast outlay of 
money that private companies would hardly undertake 
them. A law was passed by Congress in 1902 by which 
the government of the United States provided a large sum 
of money, obtained from the sale of pubHc lands in the 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 19I 

West, which was to be spent in surveys for determining 
the best sites for irrigation projects and in constructing 
dams, reservoirs, and ditches for direct irrigation of these 
lands chosen. A few of these large irrigation schemes 
have already reached completion, and others are under 
construction. 

One of these, the Salt River Project, we will describe 
in full. 

The Salt River comes down from the slopes of the 
White Mountains in eastern Arizona, which are about 
twice as high as those of the same name in New Hamp- 
shire. Before joining the Gila River, its valley widens 
out into a flat, gently sloping plain girt in with mountains. 
This broadened portion of the valley is very dry and hot, 
but it has a productive soil, and, when supplied with water 
in the summer season, produces abundant crops. A little 
farther down the valley are the cities of Phoenix, the capital, 
and Tempe. Here, then, is an ideal spot upon which to 
undertake a plan for irrigation. 

The Salt River has also a good water supply. The 
White Mountains, from which its headwaters spring, 
are high enough to receive heavy snows in winter brought 
by the regular moist winds from the Pacific. During the 
winter season these mountains become covered with 
snows many feet deep and serve as natural reservoirs. 
In the warm sun of early spring in this southern climate, 
the snows melt away and fill the valley with floods. But 
these floods pass off downstream, and in the middle and 
late summer little water is to be had. The first great prob- 
lem was how to store up the flood waters and hold them in 
check till needed for irrigating the dry lands of the valley 
in midsummer. 



192 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

The government engineers of the Reclamation Service 
had made a careful survey of the Salt River Valley from 
its sources in the mountains, including its tributary streams, 
its spring floods, climate, forests, and other resources. 
They decided as a result of this careful study that the Salt 
River Valley would be an excellent place to try out their 
plan of irrigation on a large scale. It would involve the 
building of an immense dam across the valley, at large 
expense, for impounding the surplus spring waters. Up 
the river from Phoenix is the above-mentioned broadened 
valley. This land slopes back gently toward the moun- 
tains on both sides of the river and supplies a large area 
suitable for irrigation. A survey of this extensive valley 
revealed about 240,000 acres of good soil which would 
bear heavy crops if water in sufficient quantity could be 
secured. In fact, some of this land had been irrigated 
for many years and was exceedingly productive. With- 
out a supply of water for irrigation, this tract was almost 
worthless. With an adequate water supply, it would 
leap into great values and become the home of thousands 
of thrifty farmers and would even develop villages and 
towns. 

About sixty-two miles up the valley from Phoenix 
they found a spot where the river had cut a deep gorge 
through the mountains. At this narrow place the engi- 
neers decided to build a dam which would create a lake in 
the valley above. The upstream portion of the valley, 
being wider, would permit the formation of a lake twenty- 
five miles long and from one to two miles wide. Once 
filled with flood-waters, such a lake would supply a large 
reserve for purposes of irrigation. 

A bird's-eye view of this river valley as furnishing oppor- 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 1 93 

tunity for irrigation on a grand scale deserves our careful 
attention. The lower part of the valley, including the 
best farm lands, is a hot and dry desert. But a hundred 
fifty miles to the east, the high mountains serve as a reser- 
voir for collecting the winter snows and spring rains. By 
means of a large dam in its middle course the spring floods 
from the mountains could be caught and held in check till 
the dry summer time. The broad valley of the lower course 
might receive this refreshment during the long summer 
season, and the near-by cities of Phoenix and Tempe would 
supply a good market for the products of this region of 
gardens and farms. 

Such a large enterprise as this for reclaiming arid or 
desert lands demands wise and experienced forethought, 
not only in the preHminary survey and plan of the entire 
project, but also in its energetic and careful execution. It 
would cost several millions of dollars to work out the plan, 
and if successful, it will last for hundreds of years, and 
furnish homes to thousands of families. It was a govern- 
ment enterprise, planned and carried through by expert 
government engineers of the Reclamation Service. 

The largest engineering problem of the whole project 
was the construction of the Roosevelt Dam across the 
narrow gorge which was to gather and hold back the waters 
of the lake. The site of this proposed dam was in the midst 
of a rugged mountainous region, far removed from roads 
and very difficult of approach with supplies. Before 
beginning the work on the dam, it was necessary to con- 
struct houses for the workmen, gather tools and supplies, 
provide men and machinery, and to establish roads and 
telephone connections with the outside world. 

The construction of an easy, substantial road up the 



194 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

rough mountain valley, connecting Phoenix with the settle- 
ment at the dam, was first to be provided. The cities of 
Phoenix and Tempe raised a subscription of ^75,000 for 
the building of this road. It was laid out through a very 
difiicult mountainous country, along the steep, rocky 
sides of the river gorges. Its scenery is wild, Hke that of 
the great river canyons of Arizona. The Apache Indians 
from their reservation came in and offered to help in its 
construction. At first they were not strong and skillful 
workers. But when well fed, and better trained to this kind 
of labor, they proved efficient workmen and were paid the 
same wages as white men. 

In the construction of the dam a large amount of cement 
and concrete material was needed. The cost of hauling 
this material from Phoenix, after being shipped in from a 
distance, proved so great that a cement mill was built 
near the dam, where cement-making material had been 
found. An immense amount of lumber and wood was 
required for the scaffolding and cement forms used in the 
dam construction, and also for bunk-houses and other 
structures in the village of Roosevelt near the works. On 
the mountain slopes near by, forests of pine were fortu- 
nately growing. Here sawmills were at once erected for 
supplying wood and lumber. In order to secure an electric 
plant which would furnish power for the cement mill, for 
the machines used in dam construction, and for later pump- 
ing purposes in the valley below, it was decided to build 
a canal twenty miles long vv^hich v/ould generate 5000 
horse power. Twenty miles above Roosevelt, a small 
dam was built and from this a high-line canal was conducted 
down the valley. At the Roosevelt Dam the water was 
dropped through a sloping tunnel to the wheels at the 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 1 95 

power house. In this way the water of the river was 
chiefly used for building the dam which checked the 
river in its course and caused it to form the lake. 

The work of constructing the Roosevelt Dam was begun 
in the spring of 1905. To insure a safe basis for the founda- 
tion, it was necessary to dig down to solid rock and to 
anchor the ends of the dam deep in the sides of the rocky 
cliffs. It seemed as if the river had made up its mind to 
prevent the work. Flood after flood came tearing down the 
valley, sweeping away the work of the contractor and his 
men. A heavy flood late in November destroyed all that 
had been done and did much damage to the newly-built 
road along the canyon. Later also the contractors were 
greatly hindered by these unusual and destructive freshets. 

During the construction of the dam, the water from 
above was let through a tunnel cut in the soHd rock around 
the end of the dam. After the construction of the dam 
also the water was let out from time to time through a 
tunnel into the main channel of the river, whence it could 
run down to the second dam forty miles further on, 
where it was diverted upon the irrigated lands. 

The Roosevelt Dam, when completed, was 280 feet high 
and about 1080 feet along its top, where a wagon road 
was built. It is in the form of a semicircle arched upward 
toward the stream for great power of resistance. The 
dam has a very broad foundation and tapers gradually 
towards the top. At either end near the rock cHffs are 
spillways where the flood waters can escape when the 
lake is overfilled. The dam contains about 340,000 cubic 
yards of masonry in which 25,000 barrels of cement were 
used. By constructing its own cement-making mill, the 
government saved more than ^500,000 for the people who 



196 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

were to use the irrigated lands, since they, in time, were to 
pay back the costs of construction to the government. 

About forty miles below the Roosevelt Dam it was 
necessary to construct a second dam, called the Granite 
Reef or Diversion Dam, because the waters collected behind 
this dam were diverted from the river channel through 
large canals to the thousands of acres of valley land which 
was to be irrigated. The Granite Reef Dam is 38 feet high 
and 1 100 feet long, and cost half a milUon dollars. The water 
held in reserve in the large lake, forty miles above, can be 
let out from time to time at the Roosevelt Dam. Thence 
it flows down the river channel to the diversion dam, 
where it is diverted to the canals for irrigation. The 
lake reservoir above the Roosevelt Dam has a capacity 
for holding in reserve 1,300,000 acre-feet of water. (An 
acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover an acre 
of ground a foot deep.) This reservoir at the time it was 
built was one of the largest artificial reservoirs in the 
world. 

The amount of good land in this tract that can be directly 
supplied with water from the river is about 160,000 acres, 
but all together there are some 240,000 acres that might 
be irrigated, if the supply of water were sufficient. A 
large ditch starting from the diversion dam on the north 
side has a flow of 2000 cubic feet per second, and distrib- 
utes its water through numerous smaller channels to the 
acreage on the north side of the river. A second ditch 
corresponding to this, built on the south side, has a flow of 
1500 cubic feet per second and distributes its waters to the 
fields on the south side of the valley. The Verde River 
also comes in above the diversion dam and the two streams 
combined are expected to furnish enough water for about 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION I97 

240,000 acres. Good irrigated land, well located, is worth 
one hundred dollars an acre, or more. Some fruit lands 
are sold at one thousand dollars an acre. The same quality 
of land without water may be worth not more than five or 
six dollars per acre. 

The farm lands between the main ditch and the river 
can be irrigated by drawing the water from the main ditch. 
The big ditch has an embankment on the lower side through 
which a sluice box extends. One end of the box is under 
water in the big ditch, while the other end, somewhat 
lower, extends beyond the embankment toward the fields. 
A sHding board or gate at the other end of the boxing can 
be raised or lowered to control the passage of water. The 
amount of water and the size of the sluice-box are deter- 
mined by the number of fields or farms to be irrigated from 
this outlet. Sometimes these lateral ditches are six or 
eight feet wide, and a foot or two deep, and again they are 
small, but a foot or two in breadth. 

Because water is scarce and none should be wasted, 
it is necessary to regulate carefully the amount of water 
let out and the times of opening and using the lateral 
ditches. Various devices have been used to measure the 
quantities of running water. To regulate the use of water, 
inspectors are appointed under state laws, whose business 
it is to make regular rounds of inspection of the ditches, 
and to control the distribution of irrigation waters. The 
legislatures of the different states have passed many laws 
regulating the construction of ditches and the water rights 
of users. 

A field is usually supplied with water from a single 
ditch which enters at the highest point and skirts the 
upper edge of the field. From this the water is drawn 



1 98 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

off in furrows between the rows of potatoes, or fruit trees, 
or, in the case of wheat or alfalfa, the whole field is flooded 
till the soil is well soaked. The water is then turned off 
for a week or two till a second watering is required. A 
farmer should show great care in taking the levels and 
slopes of his fields, in laying off his ditches so as to get the 
best flow of water without wasting it, and without wasting 
the soils. During the season of cultivation the farmer 
is busy all day long opening and closing his ditches and 
regulating the flow of water upon his fields. 

Some of the lands which He beyond the reach of the irri- 
gation ditches will be suppHed with water from under- 
ground sources reached by wells. The electric power gen- 
erated at several points in the river above will be used 
to pump the water from these wells. At the Roosevelt 
Dam and at several points in the river channel below, good 
power sites have been selected, and it is estimated that in 
time there will be 25,000 horse power which can be used 
partly for pumping and other farm uses, and partly for 
factories, street cars, etc., in the cities. The same water 
can be used first to produce electric power and afterwards 
for irrigation. 

The irrigated lands of the Salt River Valley are very 
fertile. They He well to the south in a hot cHmate and 
can be cultivated the whole year through, yielding two or 
three crops. The lands are better suited to intensive 
truck gardening than to cereals. For this reason, small 
farms of not more than forty acres are as much as one 
family can well cultivate. The citrous fruits, oranges 
and lemons, flourish. Alfalfa is the principal crop and 
yields four or five cuttings a year, and is used for fattening 
cattle. Ostriches are also raised in large flocks and fed 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 1 99 

on alfaKa. Sugar beets are cultivated, also cotton. Corn, 
wheat, and other cereals can be raised, but not so profitably 
as fruits and vegetables. The near-by cities naturally 
furnish a good market for vegetables and garden truck, 
for fruits and dairy products. 

The lands are reserved to actual settlers in small tracts 
of from forty to eighty acres. The average cost per acre 
to the government in executing these projects is between 
forty and fifty dollars. In purchasing a forty-acre farm, 
therefore, the settler, at ^50 an acre, would pay ^2000, 
or ^200 a year for ten years. In the Salt River Project 
the cost has been about ^35 per acre, or ^1400 for 
forty acres. 

The farmer coming with his family upon a new piece 
of irrigated land has much labor and expense before the 
first crop can be raised. The land will need a house, barns 
for the stock, farm machines and tools, fences, seed for 
planting, a well and pump, and household equipment. The 
farmer will require money for family expenses and a store 
of feed for his cattle, horses, etc., before the first crop can 
be raised. The land will need to be carefully surveyed to 
show the slopes and the proper location of irrigating ditches. 
The first year payments on the land and the local taxes 
must be met. It has been estimated that a farmer with 
a family will need between ^1500 and ^3000 to meet his 
necessary expenses in getting his farm upon a paying basis 
during the first two years. 

But thousands of such famiHes have found homes on 
these irrigated lands and by their industry and thrift 
have made them into profitable farms. About 220,000 
acres have been taken up in the Salt River Valley and 
more than a million dollars' worth of products have been 



200 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

harvested in a single year. The Salt River improvement 
has been one of the most important and successful reclama- 
tion projects thus far undertaken by the government. 
The number of acres of tillable land belonging to this proj- 
ect is 240,000, and the cost to the government ^9,878,- 
521. It is expected that this money will be returned 
to the government by the annual payments and that it can 
then be appHed to new projects in other regions. 

The Salt River Project of southern Arizona is one of 
a large number of projects which are located on streams 
flowing into the Pacific Ocean. It is a part of the southern 
Colorado River drainage system. The upper sources of 
the Colorado River, including the Green River in Wyoming 
and the Grand River in western Colorado, are also impor- 
tant irrigation streams. They draw their waters from the 
melting snows of the high Rocky Mountain ridges, where 
the west winds from the Pacific deposit their moisture in 
winter and spring. In California the San Joaquin and 
Sacramento rivers irrigate likewise the great valley of cen- 
tral California. Further north the Klamath and especially 
the upper streams of the Columbia, coming down from the 
high Rockies, supply water to many of the broad valleys 
like those of southern Idaho and eastern Washington. 

The Snake River in southern Idaho flows through 
a broad valley two hundred fifty miles long and from fifty 
to ninety miles wide. In this valley several large irriga- 
tion projects have been successfully carried out, some 
of them by the United States Government, others by large 
private companies. This river has its sources in the high 
Rockies south of Yellowstone Park and the water stored 
in the mountains later irrigates the valley two and three 
hundred miles away in southern Idaho. 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 201 

The Minnedoka Project gets its water from a reser- 
voir formed by a dam in the Snake River. The water 
above the dam is thus raised to a height sufficient to supply 
two ditches, the one on the south side supplying 60,000 acres 
and the one on the north 8000 acres. A striking feature 
of this project is the construction of three pumping stations 
rising in a series of thirty feet each by which water is pumped 
up to levels thirty, sixty, and ninety feet above the south 
side ditch, thus bringing a series of terraces under irriga- 
tion that otherwise could not be supplied by the main ditch. 

Just below this on the south side of the Snake River is 
the famous Twin Falls Project, which was organized and 
managed by a private company, and by means of a broad, 
deep ditch from the Snake River supplies many thousands 
of acres with water. In the midst of this, the beautiful 
city of Twin Falls has sprung up. The productive volcanic 
soil of this region yields remarkable crops of grains, alfalfa, 
fruits, and potatoes. Much farther down the Snake 
River, on the north side, are other great and successful 
irrigation projects, at Boise and Payette. This river valley 
has already developed a large number of successful irriga- 
tion schemes, and in the future they will be still further 
extended. Several states must cooperate in these schemes 
because the mountain sources and reservoirs are in one 
state and the irrigation projects in others. 

On the other side of the Rockies, just east of Yellow- 
stone Park, is a very interesting and important irrigation 
project in the valley of the Shoshone River. The water 
of the river is stored behind a great dam built in a narrow 
canyon of the Shoshone eight miles above the town of 
Cody. It is the highest dam of this sort in the world, 
328^ feet high, and impounds 456,000 acre-feet. It regu- 



202 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

lates the discharge of waters of the river by means of a 
tunnel ten feet in diameter supplied with gates, and by 
four cast-iron discharge pipes, each five feet in diameter. 
One hundred thirty thousand acres of irrigable land lie 
near the storage works, and several hundred thousand 
acres additional are tributary to this development project. 
A diversion dam twelve feet in height across the Shoshone 
River gives a head of water for the irrigation ditches turned 
off to either side. Four main irrigating canals are provided 
for, two of them eight miles above Cody, and two others 
about ten miles below the town. One of those canals 
before it comes out into the valley is carried through a 
mountain tunnel three and one half miles in length. 

The purpose of the Reclamation Service in dealing 
with these works is to give as much assistance as possible 
to settlers. The agents employed by the government 
in supervising the canals and the distribution of the water 
to growing crops are fully experienced in this kind of work. 
A tract for a demonstration farm has been set aside in 
each project. This is managed by the Reclamation Serv- 
ice for the benefit of the settlers. A demonstration farmer 
is employed, who has had much experience in such work 
and is able to aid the settlers in laying out their distribu- 
tion systems, and in building their canals, also in determin- 
ing what crops to raise and how and when to apply the 
water. 

The Shoshone River is one of the smaller branches 
of a tributary of the upper Missouri. All these streams 
which combine to form the upper Missouri, flowing east- 
ward from the Rocky Mountains, are used for purposes 
of irrigation, such as the Milk, the Missouri, the Yellow- 
stone, and many smaller branches. Many broad, inter- 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 203 

montane valleys and the level lands far out into the eastern 
plains have been made fruitful by distributing the water 
from these rivers upon the arid fields. Farther south, 
also, the North and South Forks of the Platte River and 
the Arkansas, with their numerous tributaries, have been 
extensively used in irrigating the high plains that stretch 
eastward from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. 
Near Denver on the South Platte and near Pueblo on the 
Arkansas are extensive irrigation works which have added 
much to the agricultural wealth of Colorado. For a 
thousand miles along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Moun- 
tains the region once known as dry and almost desert 
plains has been made productive by irrigation ditches. 
In springtime the melting snows on the mountains, whose 
waters have been stored up behind dams in the mountain 
gorges, have furnished the means of enriching the plains 
during the summer. 

The Rio Grande River, which drains the slopes of the 
southern Rockies and forms a long boundary between the 
United States and Mexico, has long been used both by our 
country and by Mexico for irrigation. Indeed, Mexico 
complained that the irrigation works in Colorado and 
New Mexico had used up so much of the water that the 
Mexicans were not receiving their proper share. After 
much dispute an agreement was reached with Mexico by 
which she would accept 60,000 acre-feet each year as full 
compensation. 

After long and full surveys it was determined to locate 
the great storage dam at Elephant Butte, 120 miles north 
of El Paso. "This will be one of the largest dams in the 
world and will make a reservoir 40 miles long, covering 
40,000 acres and containing nearly 2,600,000 acre-feet, 



204 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

or twice the amount of the Roosevelt Reservoir, and nearly 
two and a half times that of the reservoir produced by the 
Assuan Dam on the Nile." Diversion dams have been 
built lower down, and a series of ditches has been laid out 
for distributing this stored water upon various tracts for 
many miles along the valley. The products of this warm 
southern country are similar to those of the Salt River 
Project in Arizona. 

The first Mormon settlers about Salt Lake were among 
the earhest users of river water for purposes of irrigation 
in this country. Along the Jordan and Bear rivers, flow- 
ing into Salt Lake, they began a system of irrigation that 
has converted those desert lands into gardens of plenty. 
The mountains just east of Salt Lake, the Wasatch, and 
those to the south, are high enough to catch the winter 
snows and store up moisture for the rivers. In Nevada, 
which is, Hke Utah, a part of the Great Basin, the rivers 
coming down from the mountains furnish waters for ex- 
tensive projects. 

On the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada Moun- 
tains are two neighboring streams whose waters have 
been combined to irrigate a tract of more than 200,000 
acres. Lake Tahoe, in the mountain edge of California, 
is the storage basin for the Truckee River. It is a large 
and beautiful mountain lake whose waters are collected 
from the snows of the high Sierras. A great engineering 
plan was worked out by which the waters of the Truckee 
River, coming down from Lake Tahoe, were carried through 
an artificial canal across the divide into the channel of the 
Carson River, which also descends from these mountains. 
By means of a dam across the Carson Valley, the waters 
of these two rivers were led out and distributed to the 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 205 

plains below. Several important mining towns are located 
near this irrigation belt, so that the products of the farms 
and gardens will have a local market. 

A description of these various and widely separated under- 
takings of the government Reclamation Service in seven- 
teen different states of the West reveals the fact that the 
engineers who have planned these projects have been 
compelled to show marked ingenuity in solving each prob- 
lem. No two projects are so much alike that they can 
be worked out on the same plan. The physical conditions, 
mountains, valleys, rivers, the soil, and cHmate, have been 
so variable that each project has been carefully surveyed 
and the plan developed as based on the peculiar local condi- 
tions. And yet there is a general similarity of arid cHmate, 
of sources of water supply in the higher mountains, of farm, 
garden, and orchard products, and of small tracts with 
intensive farming. 

A map s^udy of the mountains and rivers in the western 
half of the United States will show that the central ranges 
of the Rocky Mountains are the high regions from which 
all the longer rivers take their rise, as the Missouri, Platte, 
and Arkansas on the east, the Rio Grande on the south, 
and the Colorado and the Columbia on the southwest 
and the northwest. All these rivers are very important 
irrigation streams. The Pacific winds moving eastward 
across the continent drop their rains and snows upon these 
high mountains and thence the waters descend eastward 
and westward to fill the rivers and irrigate the valleys and 
plains. The lesser mountain ranges and those nearer the 
coast, such as the Sierra Nevada, Cascade, Wasatch, White 
Mountains, etc., are the sources of smaller rivers, such as 
the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Klamath, Truckee, Bear, 



2o6 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Jordan, Salt, and Humboldt. When they reach an eleva- 
tion of ten or twelve thousand feet, the mountains gather 
the winter snows from the Pacific winds and become natural 
reservoirs for irrigation streams. 

One of the government maps of the Reclamation Serv- 
ice shows that there are twenty-nine of these important 
irrigation projects distributed through the Rocky Moun- 
tain states and through the other states lying in the arid 
regions farther west. This map shows that all the western 
states, seventeen in number, including the Dakotas, Kansas, 
and Texas, are deriving important benefit from the govern- 
ment efforts to reclaim arid lands. Some of these projects 
are now completed or nearing completion ; others are under 
investigation by the government engineers. These proj- 
ects contemplate the irrigation of 3,101,450 acres of land, 
the impounding of waters with a total storage capacity 
of 13,272,490 acre-feet in the numerous reservoirs either 
completed or under construction. 

It is then the purpose of the United States Government 
to work out these large irrigation projects for the benefit 
of the common people and to divide up these irrigated lands 
into small farms for actual settlers, who pay for their lands 
and water rights in yearly payments extending through 
a period of ten years and without interest. In this way the 
government gets back the money it has spent and later 
can use it in new projects. It is not permitted that wealthy 
men should buy up large tracts of land and hold it for 
speculation. The whole purpose is to help the common 
man of small means. The government provides for town 
settlements on these projects, reserves lots for schools 
and churches, and in some cases provides for the founding 
of central or consoKdated schools. 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 207 

One of the difficult problems for the Reclamation Serv- 
ice is to secure the settlement on these irrigation projects 
of men who show superior intelligence, energy, and thrift. 
Too many men have entered lands on these irrigated 
tracts who, because of lack of experience or of practical 
intelligence, or because of lazy or shiftless habits, have 
proved failures. Men experienced in reclamation service 
assert that it requires a greater intelligence to culti- 
vate lands by irrigation methods than farms dependent 
upon natural rainfall. The laying out and care of ditches, 
and the more intensive culture of smaller farms, seem to 
require more scientific methods. This is especially true 
in fruit raising, in truck farming, and in other more special- 
ized forms of culture. 

Farming on irrigated lands, where water can be depended 
on, is reasonably sure of regular returns. The crop pro- 
duction is more directly under man's control, and the sun- 
shine in these regions for ripening and harvesting of crops is 
more steady and reliable. The productivity of lands under 
this more intensive culture is greater and it requires much 
less land to supply a family. It has been claimed that 
under proper methods of irrigation an acre of land will on 
the average support one person. 

The United States Government came late into the busi- 
ness of irrigation, and gave its attention chiefly to those 
large projects which were beyond the reach of private 
capital. The work of the government, however, has 
greatly stimulated other agencies in the development of 
irrigation. There are also certain large phases of irri- 
gation that require the general management and control 
of the central government. The larger rivers pass through 
or border several states. The main sources of water supply 



208 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

are often in the mountains of one state, while the use of 
the water is in other states far distant. The preservation 
of these water suppHes and the building of reservoirs in 
the mountains should be largely controlled by the national 
government. The fair distribution of the water supplies 
among ditch companies in several states can best be man- 
aged under national laws and administration. In several 
river valleys along the border of Canada on the north and 
of Mexico on the south, international disputes have arisen 
as to the division and use of the stream waters. The 
national government must settle by diplomacy all ques- 
tions which arise in dealing with foreign states. 

Several different agencies have been at work on these 
irrigation projects, including private individuals, smaller 
and larger groups of cooperating farmers, corporations, 
and the government. In the year 1909 there were more 
than 14,000,000 acres under irrigation, distributed as 
follows (Fortier : Use of Water in Irrigation) : 

Agency. Acres. 

Individual and partnership enterprises 6,624,614 

Cooperative enterprises 4j643,539 

Commercial enterprises 1,809,379 

Irrigation districts . 528,642 

U. S. Reclamation Service 395,646 

Carey Act enterprise p 288,553 

U. S. Indian Service 172,912 

14,463,285 

Another method of irrigation worth mentioning in this 
connection is that by means of wells. In the western 
part of North Dakota and South Dakota, in Kansas and 
Nebraska and Texas, wells are bored often 1000 or 1200 
feet deep. Abundant underground water for a large farm 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 209 

is often secured in this way and is sometimes pumped 
into artificial basins or lakes, which are located and dug 
out on the higher levels of the farm, whence the water can 
be carried by ditches to the fields. In Texas about San 
Antonio and other places this method has been used with 
marked success. It depends upon abundant supplies of 
underground water, and is at first quite expensive because 
of the cost of boring the wells and of equipping them with 
pumps or windmills. Pumping from wells, as noticed pre- 
viously, is also used as a secondary means of irrigation on 
the Salt River Project, and in other places. The water 
power obtained from rivers is often used for pumping. 
This plan of irrigation is also followed in southern New 
Mexico and Arizona, where there are extensive tracts of 
good dry land for which no river is obtainable. This mode 
of irrigation is likely to become more and more impor- 
tant, as there are extensive areas in all the western states 
to which water from rivers cannot be applied, but which 
are in other respects good for agriculture. 

Still another plan of irrigation is followed in the rice 
fields of the southern states, in the Carolinas, in Louisi- 
ana, Texas, and Arkansas. Formerly only swamp lands 
were used for such purposes, as along the low coastal 
swamps of the Carolinas. But in the newer states of the 
Southwest, the prairie land, so called, is used for rice fields. 
A high ridge of land is thrown up around the fields, and 
water is pumped up by engines ten or twenty feet from 
neighboring streams or bayous, or from wells, and the 
fields are flooded at the proper time for sowing and cultivat- 
ing the rice. Of course, this kind of irrigation is not due 
to a dry climate and lack of rainfall, but to the fact that 
rice grows on flooded lands and requires large quantities 



2IO TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

of water which can be definitely controlled at the season 
for planting. 

It has been estimated by experts that the amount of 
land in the arid belt of the United States that ultimately 
can be brought under cultivation is nearly forty-five milHon 
acres, or about three times as much as at present. With 
the more improved, intensive cultivation of this area by 
scientific methods, its productiveness will be largely in- 
creased. The extensive work that has already been done 
in developing the agriculture of the West through irriga- 
tion is only the good beginning of a far greater work yet 
to be done. The total estimated final cost of all the irri- 
gation projects now finished or under way is given as 
^867,374,186. 

Our treatment of the subject of irrigation thus far goes 
to show that it is a matter of large national significance. 
It is fundamentally a home-making problem, a means of 
giving opportunity to tens of thousands of worthy families 
to estabHsh themselves comfortably on good farms where 
they can live under wholesome surroundings, with churches 
and schools, and all the conditions favorable to proper 
living. 

Egypt and India 

Later in the study of foreign lands we shall meet with 
ancient and modern systems of irrigation on a large scale. 

Egypt, along the Nile River, illustrates both of these. 
Egypt has been called the "gift of the Nile." For thou- 
sands of years, with its annual overflow, the Nile has 
brought refreshment and fertility to the narrow flood plain 
along the course of the river, and to the broad delta region 
at its mouth. The sources of these floods are the tropical 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 211 

rains of Central Africa and of the mountains of Abyssinia. 
From July to September the mighty floods that pour down 
the Blue Nile, carrying a heavy load of silt, cause the over- 
flow of the lower Nile, overspread the valleys, and deposit 
their rich silt upon the fields. This yearly contribution 
of fresh mud gives a permanent fertility to the soil. As 
the floods retire the crops spring up that give food to Egypt. 

The Nile and the Mississippi have curious likenesses 
and differences. The Mississippi, too, has its great floods, 
caused chiefly by the overflow of the Ohio, Missouri, and 
other rivers. But instead of letting its waters out upon 
the flood plain, men have built levees hundreds of miles 
along its banks to hold its excess waters in check and to 
prevent them from flooding the bottom lands. The Missis- 
sippi, too, has a broad delta, but it consists of marsh lands 
not yet brought under control for man's uses. It has been 
proposed, by a better regulation of the river, to build up 
the delta lands and make them productive for man's benefit. 
The Nile flows through a desert with a very narrow and 
fertile flood plain. The broad Mississippi Valley has 
sufficient rainfall to make its great fertile plains productive 
for hundreds of miles back from the river. 

In recent years, since England has taken a hand in man- 
aging the affairs of Egypt, expensive improvements have 
been made in the irrigation of the Nile Valley. Thousands 
of square miles of fertile land along the Nile Valley were 
not watered, partly because the flood waters were not held 
back, and partly because the waters were not carried by 
ditches along the higher levels. At Assuan, about 500 
miles up the river from the sea, the British have built the 
great Assuan Dam. It is constructed of soHd masonry, is 
about 6400 feet long, 120 feet high, 80.4 feet thick at the 



212 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

base, and 23 feet at the top. Back of this great stone breast- 
work are stored the waters of the Nile, 1,000,000 acre-feet, 
not so much as the Roosevelt Dam and lake on the Salt 
River. In order to prevent the silt from collecting above 
the dam and filHng up the reservoir, 180 sluice-gates allow 
the heaviest flood waters to pass by, carrying their silt. 
Later the gates close down and impound the waters. The 
Assuan Dam, like the Roosevelt Dam, is built for storage 
purposes. Lower down the Nile at Assiut is a secondary 
or diversion dam, 48 feet high and 3930 feet long, also 
supplied with sluice-gates for passing the floods. By 
means of this diversion dam and the stored waters above 
Assuan, they have been able to carry the water to 1,600,- 
000 acres not before irrigated, and convert them into fruit- 
ful fields of cotton and sugar cane. In all, Egypt has now 
6,750,000 acres of irrigated land. 

In India, likewise, the British government, by construct- 
ing extensive and costly works for irrigating the arid and 
desert lands, has vastly improved the condition of the 
native races and guarded against great famines. Some 
parts of India have excessive rainfall, while other extensive 
areas are arid or desert. The streams coming down from 
the Himalayas, like our western rivers, are flooded in spring 
and early summer, and the flood waters are stored up 
in numerous reservoirs, behind massive dams, and let 
out later in the season. In the valley of the Indus, four 
million acres are irrigated. The Chenab River, a branch 
of the Indus, has a dam 4000 feet long, from which a 
great canal starts. The base of the canal is 250 feet 
wide by II feet deep. The main canal is 400 miles 
long, has 1200 miles of lateral ditches, and has con- 
verted 2,000,000 acres from a desert to fruitful fields. 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 213 

Compare this with the Salt River Project. A strip of 
country about 1400 miles long through Northern India 
from Lahore to Calcutta, and about loo miles wide, 
is mostly irrigated land. Central and southern India 
have also extensive irrigation works. In the Madras 
district thousands of wells are used for irrigation purposes. 
No other country has spent so much in recent times as 
India or has brought so many millions of acres under 
cultivation by the methods of irrigation. In 1901 it was 
estimated that the total of irrigated lands in India was 
53,000,000 acres. 

For many centuries China, by her very complex system 
of great canals and a network of smaller connecting water- 
ways, has provided for the excess waters of her great rivers. 
By this system of interlacing canals in her lowlands China 
has provided main avenues of commerce and has likewise 
supplied water for the irrigation of her rice fields. These 
waters have also helped to spread fertility by carrying the 
silt over the fields as in Egypt. 

It is a curious and remarkable fact that the four impor- 
tant seats of the ancient empires have been great river 
valleys where extensive systems of irrigation have been 
in vogue for centuries — Egypt with the Nile River, famous 
for ancient cities like Memphis, Cairo, and Alexandria; 
Mesopotamia with the Tigris and Euphrates, having the 
ruins of Babylon and Nineveh; India with the Ganges 
and Indus, the cities like Delhi and Calcutta ; China with 
the Yangtse Kiang and Hoangho and the cities of Shanghai 
and Peking. It is also in these valleys that the greatest 
irrigating systems of the world are in use to-day. In Tur- 
key, modern engineers have made surveys for restoring 
and enlarging the ancient irrigation works of Mesopotamia. 



214 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

At the time of the discovery of America, the Incas of 
Peru and the Mexicans had in operation extensive systems 
of irrigation upon which their wealth and prosperity were 
built. In ancient and in modern times, agriculture, carried 
on in arid countries by irrigation, has been one of the chief 
sources of national wealth. 

Problems of the Future 

At the close of this discussion of irrigation, we are brought 
up sharply against new and striking developments. This 
study has carried us naturally into the midst of national 
and world problems. Irrigation is just beginning its 
larger work. The arid districts of our own country and 
the vast semidesert regions of Africa, Asia, and Australia, 
when subjected to modern scientific methods, are yielding 
more and more to human necessities. A few of these large 
current and future problems may be stated thus : 

At present there is a large waste of water in our western 
schemes of irrigation. There is also more or less waste 
and disorder due to a conflict of state and national con- 
trol. How are our water resources and water powers in 
the western states to be best conserved and administered? 

There is a growing use of wells for irrigation. What 
extent of valuable land can be irrigated by pumping from 
wells ? 

In certain productive, irrigated regions of the West 
valuable products go to waste for lack of suitable trans- 
portation. How can this great loss be remedied ? 

In the rain-belt region of the United States, irriga- 
tion is now much used to increase production. How 
extensive may this become in the future ? 

How may the flood waters of the Mississippi and of its 



THE SALT RIVER PROJECT AND IRRIGATION 21 5 

tributary streams be controlled and used to the best 
advantage ? 

To what extent may the vast arid regions of the Sahara, 
of central Asia, and of Australia be made productive by 
irrigation ? 

The responsibihty of government in these great problems 
of conservation is one of our serious political problems. 

References 

The Uses of Water in Irrigation. Samuel Fortier. McGraw-Hill 
Book Co. 

Irrigation and Drainage. F. H. King. The Macmillan Co. 

Hearings before the Committee on Irrigation. Government 
Report, 1909. 

House Document 204, 1906-1907. 59th Congress. First and 
Second Session. 

House Document 79, 1902. 57th Congress. Second Session. 

House Document 86, 1905-1906. 59th Congress. First Session. 

Annual Report of Smithsonian Institution. 1915. 

Irrigation near Phoenix, Arizona, 1897. Government Pamphlet, 
No. 2. 

American Irrigation Farming. W. H. Olin. A. C. McClurg. 

Ninth Annual Report of the Reclamation Service. F. H. Newell. 

Water Supply and Irrigation Papers Nos. 70-74, 1902. 



CHAPTER XII 

METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVER PROJECT 

Before taking up for discussion the detailed method of 
handling an organized unit of study we should first examine 
one of these big units and see what it furnishes us to start 
with. 

The Salt River Irrigation Project, which illustrates 
such a large unit of study, as presented above, contains 
some twenty-eight pages of printed matter. Considered 
as a whole, this unit of study has certain marked charac- 
teristics. 

1. It is an organized whole, based upon a single, pur- 
poseful idea. It is the idea of storing up water in a river 
and later in the season distributing it over arid land for 
the purpose of raising profitable crops. Back of this is 
the idea of furnishing homes for the families of worthy 
settlers. 

2. This unit of study gives a somewhat full, concrete 
demonstration of the process of actually working out this 
idea on one large project. The idea itself is a constructive 
principle which organizes the whole management, and the 
workers, machines, and processes, into one progressive move- 
ment, till the whole purpose is achieved. This idea or 
purpose has enough energy in it to set all these forces in 
motion and keep them going till the result is reached. So 
far as the child or the learner is concerned, it is an ener- 

2X6 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVEK PROJECT 217 

getic thought movement, an effort to grasp and assimilate 
the steps in this organized enterprise. 

3. The idea begins in one objective example, and grows 
step by step to national proportions and later to a world 
significance, comprising the great nations of the present 
and reaching back thousands of years into antiquity. 

4. This unit is based on a practical government project 
which illustrates the organization of forces at work in the 
world to-day. The whole subject has its setting in practical 
Kfe. It begins in hfe conditions and ends with a more 
definite interpretation of life forces acting in a broad field. 

5. Into this center and grouped along the course of this 
developing process of thought are gathered and organized 
important knowledge materials, first of all from geography 
(physical, climatic, agricultural, and commercial), but 
also from natural science, from mathematics, from history, 
and from government. A very large amount of important 
knowledge is brought into close, organic, and significant 
relation to the central developing idea. This kind of unit- 
study has been already worked out, organized into a con- 
sistent whole, and put into the hands of the teacher for use 
in the classroom. 

Again, before discussing the teacher's method of han- 
dling this unit of study in the classroom we may well ask, 
What mastery of this subject should the teacher have before 
going into the class at all? This is a searching question 
and the answer should go to the root of the matter. The 
knowledge of such a subject for teaching purposes goes 
deep into the logical framework of the whole as based upon 
a central organizing idea, and the relation of all the facts 
to this basal thought. The outline and sequence of main 
points should stand out clearly, so that the teacher can 



2l8 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

handle the subject with assurance before the class without 
a book. It is certain that the teacher should have a well- 
digested and ripened knowledge of the subject. This 
far exceeds what we usually call thoroughness because it i 
involves a matured and well-balanced knowledge, a facile 
power in the use and wider interpretation of fundamental 
ideas. 

Equally important is a correct judgment of these ma- 
terials as related to a child's needs and interests. We are 
compelled to presuppose in this case that the organization 
and plan of treatment for this unit of study are suitable 
to children. 

Are we justified in asserting that until these three 

important matters are provided for, all discussion of 

method is premature? First, a full, well-organ- 

Orgamzed j^ed, adequate treatment of a complete unit of 

subject ' ^ ^ 

matter a study ; secondly, a matured and masterly knowl- 

V\ocic for 

method ^^gc of this Unit of study by the teacher for 
teaching purposes ; and thirdly, the subject as 
organized appropriate to the understanding and interests 
of children. If our conclusion, as suggested above, is 
mainly true, a profitable discussion of method in teaching 
a subject should be based upon well-organized, completely 
developed units of study. In other words, all rational 
method is inseparably connected with organized subject 
matter. Without definite subject matter in mind, or with 
miscellaneous or ill-organized data, it is impertinent to 
talk of method. It would be Hke asking a contractor to 
build a house without plans or specifications and without ' 
determination of the materials to be used. 

It is true that we have had much discussion of methods 
of teaching subjects without reference to definite lesson 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVER PROJECT 219 

material, but it is quite likely that much time has been 
wasted in such discussions and that much confusion of 
mind has been produced among teachers. With such pre- 
liminaries out of the way, we are prepared to discuss the 
method of handling such a developed unit of study as 
" The Salt River Project and Irrigation." 

In regard to lesson planning it is a natural conclusion 
from our previous discussion that one is not prepared to 

plan or teach the first lesson until the entire unit 

, , .- . , J A • Complete 

of study has been effectively mastered. Agam, mastery of 

unless the basal organization of the whole unit is ^JpJ^*"'® 
clearly in mind, the planning of lessons is formal 
and fruitless. This deeper, connected thinking, by which 
we organize all the parts into a well-rounded whole, is 
necessary or else our so-called method breaks up into 
fragments and peters out. Lesson planning will ahnost 
take care of itself, if we will organize rich and copious 
material into a strong sequence of developing thought. 
If we can get a dynamic thought-movement into a big, 
enriching subject that grows into an important whole, 
lesson planning will be easy. 

The treatment of one of these big units of study breaks 
up easily into two big sections or halves. First is the 
revelation of the main idea in a striking objective ^^^ ^^^^^^ 
manifestation. The Salt River Project is the in the treat- 
concrete working out and demonstration of the 
idea by means of vivid, detailed description, reenforced 
with maps and pictures. It involves difficult problems 
also, and more or less painful struggles to overcome obstruc- 
tions and obstacles: the arduous road-building, the 
dam construction broken down and swept away by un- 
expected floods, the installing of water powers, the need 



220 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

of a diversion dam, the survey of the main ditches and the 
taking out of small ditches to irrigate particular patches, 
or the hardships of the settlers waiting for the first crops. 

The second stage in a big unit is the broadening out 
of the subject so as to include the peculiar features and 
difficulties of other irrigation projects, with back references 
and comparisons to the Salt River Project. The idea 
of irrigation takes on new phases in new and quite different 
localities. New problems must be met and solved. Each 
project is a strange and difficult enterprise even for experi- 
enced and skillful engineers. And yet, when completed, 
they all serve one and the same main purpose. This idea 
grows and grows in the valleys of great western rivers till 
it becomes a powerful means for the development of seven- 
teen great western states. Not only the national govern- 
ment but large private companies and thousands of farmers 
along western rivers have been taking out ditches and are 
irrigating smaller and larger farms, till in the aggregate 
14,000,000 acres in the West are under cultivation, and 
twice as many more will gradually be brought under the 
irrigation ditch. 

The main idea has in it this wonderful power of growth, 
this expansive energy which so well expresses the char- 
acter of the westward moving pioneers, in overcoming 
the forces of nature and making them subject to man's 
uses. By its onward movement this unit of study expands 
into a national importance. We may now compare irri- 
gation in the West with that in the rice swamps and prairie 
fields of the Gulf States from the Carolinas to Texas. 

Here our unit of study as an American topic naturally 
ends. But it almost forces itself upon our attention as a 
world topic in other lands. 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVER PROJECT 221 

A third section is added as a separate unit of study, 
dealing with irrigation in Egypt, showing how such a 
topic, or its basal idea, expands and overflows into other 
continents. The Nile River as an irrigation stream is a 
conspicuous type-study of river irrigation, extending 
through thousands of years, and recently growing into still 
greater importance by the application of modern scientific 
methods. India, China, and Mesopotamia are naturally 
drawn into comparison with Egypt and with our own sys- 
tems in the Great West. All this merely shows the scope 
and developing power of a constructive, organizing idea. 

Such a unit of study is naturally a series of problems. 
The original project itself is a great problem which naturally 
breaks up into minor problems, and these the „ ^, 

^ ^ Problems m 

engmeers were compelled to meet m their natural a nattirai 
order. This necessary order we follow, encoun- °' ®^ 
tering the same difficulties they met, and struggling with 
them. The necessary causes and reasons for action are 
apparent. There is an inexorable necessity that holds 
us to the actual conditions. These are not made up, 
fictitious problems. They bring a child as near to life and 
its real conditions as it is possible to get him in the school- 
room. For this reason it is necessary to get as deep as 
possible into the facts, into whole nests of facts which fur- 
nish the hard conditions to a problem. 

The teacher should see to it that somewhere the problem, 
with its needed environment of facts, is placed clearly 
before the children. Oftentimes the conditions of the 
problem should be fully and vividly presented by the 
teacher or the book. Then the children should be given a 
chance to struggle with it and work out some sort of ra- 
tional solution. Sharp and definite thinking may be re- 



222 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

quired to show, for example, how a water power was con- 
structed, how the sluice-gates would let out the flood waters, 
how the diversion dam was built and connected with the two 
big canals, how water is drawn from the big canals to spread 
upon the fields, how electric power could be generated and 
later distributed to the farms for pumping purposes. A 
comparison of big projects will reveal how the same prob- 
lem was solved differently according to local necessities. 

In class instruction the mode of asking questions is much 

in dispute. How and what questions to ask is often bruited. 

It may be said that thorough organization of 

Questions , ii« ii«r .•• a 

based on knowledge IS a good basis for questionmg. A 
previous or- project that opens into a succession of problems 

gamzation , . . . 

is just a series of main questions, for each prob- 
lem may be put in the form of a question. Until the 
knowledge materials of a subject have been grouped 
and arranged into an orderly sequence of main points, 
it is impossible to select and locate the main questions. 
On the other hand, it is fruitless to muddle children with 
questions on a subject about which the teacher has only 
miscellaneous or badly assorted knowledge. 

The key to the situation in questioning lies in deter- 
mining the growth of the central idea in its main stages. 
An important question is one that plays directly into this 
critical argument. In the Salt River Project, for example, 
Why was this river selected as suitable for a big irrigation 
project? In what relation do the White Mountains stand 
to the main purpose? Why is it necessary to have two 
dams, and what is the special function of each? Why did 
it seem advisable to construct a cement-producing mill? 
Explain the reason for Phoenix and Tempe contributing 
^75,000 to the construction of a road up the canyon to 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVEE. PROJECT 223 

the Roosevelt Dam. Where were the best points to estab- 
lish power plants, and why ? How is one of the big ditches, 
which is drawn from the diversion dam, laid out so as to 
irrigate the largest acreage? After the farmers have 
raised good crops of fruits, vegetables, and alfalfa, how can 
they best dispose of these products? Why does the gov- 
ernment Hmit to forty or eighty acres the amount of land 
granted to one person? Why does the Reclamation Serv- 
ice establish a demonstration farm upon each of these 
projects ? 

A great amount of careless and useless questioning 
can be avoided by any teacher who will completely master 
the organization of his topic before beginning the teach- 
ing of it. 

Another mode of wasting time with questions is due to 
a wrong method of developing topics. Teachers are 
afraid to tell children anything, and show a strong tendency 
to develop the facts by questioning. But many of the 
mere facts refuse to be developed even by very shrewd 
questions. Many of the important descriptive facts must 
be directly presented by the teacher or by the book or by 
some reference. They are the necessary conditions upon 
which the problems are based and the problems as such 
cannot be understood at all until the facts are known. 
In such cases the skill of the teacher rests in a clear and 
able presentation of the facts. He should be an expert 
in language description, in map sketching, in making 
blackboard diagrams, in the selection and use of pictures, 
and in other modes of graphic illustration. His professional 
skill may be shown in inventive devices and in the varied 
use of maps and of objective illustrations. 

On the other hand, the teacher can overdo this stunt 



224 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

of illustration. He should know when to stop and to 
throw back the whole burden of thought upon the children. 
After all, this information poured out upon the children 
so freely is ncierely designed to set them to reasoning, to 
working out thought problems on the basis of the facts 
given. It is quite as important to know when to withhold 
facts — to ask a question — as to know when facts should 
be directly furnished. 

In the second stage in the treatment of large units of 
instruction, the main thought is worked out and demon- 
interpreta- strated in an enlarged way upon a group or series 
tions Qf jjg^ situations. A rapid interpretation of these 

new problems on the basis of the main idea, already fully 
explained, is demanded. The idea of irrigation, fully 
presented in the Salt River Project, speedily interprets 
the plan and execution of other similar projects in Idaho, 
Nevada, Wyoming, or Texas. And yet these new situa- 
tions bring out conditions which demand serious thought 
and a careful adjustment to new and strange locations. 
Comparisons are made which show striking contrasts and 
novel applications of a principle. In the Minnedoka 
Project but one dam is used for storage and for diverting 
the water. In others, two or more dams are used. In 
the Salt River Project the irrigated land is in one compact t\ 
body, in the Rio Grande Project it is distributed in a long 
series of tracts scattered up and down the river for many 
miles. In Wyoming the storage reservoirs are far up in 
the mountains, while the diversion dam and ditches are 
in another state far distant. In some rivers there are 
spasmodic floods, in others the flow is somewhat regular. 
In the states near the Canadian border the seasons are short 
and the products chiefly hay, potatoes, and cereals, while 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVER PROJECT 22$ 

in southern California and Arizona semitropical fruits 
are raised and the growing season lasts the twelve months 
through. 

This second stage of treatment calls for a large amount 
of comparative thinking, a certain versatility of thought 
for explaining new and novel situations. This Flexibility 
demands practical judgment, because we are deal- *^ thinking 
ing with actual conditions, not theoretical or hypothetical 
cases. Under these conditions the main idea in the larger 
unit develops and expands until it takes in a great stretch 
and variety of country. It becomes a principle of wide 
interpretation explaining and organizing hundreds of 
important geographical facts. This training into flexi- 
bility of thought is the cultivation of an important mental 
attitude. The knowledge presented in our textbooks is 
almost purely static, and is so thought of by both teacher 
and pupil. But vital, growing ideas are always variable, 
never static. They are all the time at work reconstructing 
the world and changing the old order. If children are so 
unfortunate as to get the notion that knowledge is fixed 
and invariable, Hke the facts of the multiplication table, 
they get a complete misconception of the world and of the 
forces that are shaping practical activity in the world. 
The growth and modification of ideas, the readjustment 
to new conditions, the appHcation of thought to fresh and 
difficult problems, constitute the education which fits 
children for the modern world. The world is no longer 
in the static, Chinese epoch. It is changing with a rapidity 
that keeps every thoughtful individual on the jump and 
sometimes leaves even progressive and versatile people 
far in the rear. 

In treating big units of study the use of comparison 

Q 



226 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

is a frequent and valuable instrument of instruction. In 
truth, comparison is a helpful factor in sifting 
sons develop and weighing out knowledge values and in group- 
thetype ^^ together facts which will grow into strong 
centers of influence. The presentation of new projects 
in irrigation, like the Minnedoka and Shoshone tracts, 
and their comparison with the Salt River Project gives 
the main idea of irrigation a chance to develop and show 
its importance in the West. On the stepping stones fur- 
nished by comparisons the whole unit develops its impor- 
tance. The original project, that of the Salt River, reveals 
more and more its typical character and becomes a well- 
defined standard or unit of measure with which to estimate 
all irrigation schemes. The natural inductive-deductive 
movement by which these comparisons are worked out is i 
a basal method of organizing knowledge. It is a kind of 
progressive, systematic organization that continues through 
the whole course of study. For such an idea as that of \ 
irrigation will continue its developing, constructive influ- ' 
ence through all the continents. 

In reaHty comparisons become stronger and more signifi- 
cant as we advance in the course. The ancient and 
modern methods of irrigation in Egypt, India, and China 
will be brought successively into comparison with our 
methods in Arizona. The ancient systems and the modern 
scientific methods come together and throw a strong Hght, 
each upon the other. Such comparisons of old and new, 
and of the methods of different countries and ages, give 
a reflective quality to review studies which the static, 
drill review knows nothing of. We could well afford to 
dispense with the dull routine of review drill if we could 
set the children to thinking, comparing and building up 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVER PROJECT 227 

their concepts on the basis of fundamental types, which 
form a concrete basis of comparison extending through 
the whole course of study. All the big units of study 
furnish, in the fundamental typical idea at the center of 
each, a good basis for review by comparison. Herein 
lies a clear economy of labor in learning and a firmer, more 
permanent organization of knowledge. 

We need not be frightened that a big unit of instruction 
like the Salt River Project reaches out into the world and 
draws into its organization much important ma- correlations 
terial not only from the chief phases of geography *^® natural 
(physiography, cHmate, agriculture, and markets), but 
also valuable data from science and history. Arithmetic 
has also rich picking in the statistical data and measure- 
ments, including engineering materials and costs, land 
areas, products, etc. This is only another phase of the 
strength of an organizing idea, growing and expanding 
through the grades and drawing under its influence what 
naturally belongs to it. As to method, there is nothing 
artificial in this way of handHng a topic. It is the 
natural, legitimate growth of thought, inherent in the 
very subject. 

As said before, such a topic is practical and real, spring- 
ing out of life and interpreting important forces at work 
in the world. By understanding big projects as they are 
developing in the world, we discover at the end of our study 
that the next problems are directly before us. In short, 
the future contains the solution of all these problems that 
are developing in the present Ufe of the people. Our 
method of handHng these topics leads us directly into the 
future with the kind of knowledge that enables us to inter- 
pret its difficulties. 



228 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

In our discussion thus far, we have had chiefly in mind 
the teacher and his need of well-organized knowledge. This 

Teachers ^^^^ ^P ^ ^^^ Standard for teachers. It is very 
fau to image difficult for teachers to image clearly and defi- 
c ear y nitely the succession of engineering problems in- 

volved in a project like that of the Salt River. Although 
they have read this very subject through with some care, a 
sharper test upon the essential points will reveal the fact 
that they have not thought out the situations clearly and 
completely. This is probably due to the fact that they have 
never been trained to construct complete imagery in such 
projects and not because they are short in mental abihty. 
The same test of thoroughness needs to be applied to 
teachers in the reflective and comparative studies proposed 
in the second stage of this larger topic. Teach- 

TheyfaU . , , r i ,.-.,. <• 

also in re- ^^s themselves have not formed this habit of 
tidSg making definite and specific comparisons, of 

measuring and estimating different projects on 
a standard once clearly set up. They have not been ac- 
customed to trace the growth of an idea through a series of 
variations bringing to light a fundamental process which 
goes on interpreting an ever-widening range of phenomena. 
We have been repeatedly emphasizing these things as 
the basis of the teacher's efficiency. We now turn to the 

school child and make the startHng statement 

Going down ,, ^ . ,. , . . 

into big that we are preparing to direct him into this 
cMidren'*** Same kind of effective imaging and comparative 
thinking. Indeed the reason we desire the 
teacher to do such excellent thinking is that we know the 
child can do it if he is only directed properly by a thinking 
teacher. What is to be our plan, therefore, of engaging 
the minds of children with projects like that of the Salt 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVEE. PROJECT 229 

River ? First, of course, is to take up this project seriously 
with children in its whole climatic and physical environ- 
ment, to survey the problem with the engineers, and to 
see where and how to begin the work. We are going right 
down into the project itself to deal with it in its actual 
facts and relations. The children are soon alert, heart 
and soul, and are reaching down into the essential mean- 
ings of the subject. It is curious to observe that the very 
thing which we regarded as the chief difficulty — the abiHty 
to image these complex situations — does not cause the 
children serious trouble. They are scarcely as yet out 
of the imaging state of childhood. They dote upon the 
objective and concrete. They are just ready to develop 
their concrete thinking into larger schemes — the bigger 
object lessons we have talked about. It is easier and 
more natural for children to do this kind of thinking and 
concrete imaging than for adults. Teachers have gotten 
out of the habit of doing this, for it requires an effort and 
it goes a Httle against the grain. Besides, it demands a 
good measure of real knowledge ! There are some serious 
difficulties to be met by real thought-effort on the part 
of the children, and we have no desire to soften the rigor 
and strain of this effort. In fact we are here with the chil- 
dren to struggle with these situations and keep at them 
till we work them out. It is an honest effort on the part of 
all concerned to go to the bottom of an interesting subject. 
We must admit, however, that some questions will come 
up that are too difficult for children or for us as teachers 

to try to explain. The turbine wheel, the trans- ^ 

Some tin- 
former, the nature of electrical energy, may answerable 

properly arouse the curiosity of children and may **"®^**°^^ 

be best referred to later high school and college studies 



230 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

for complete explanation. It is the nature of all big topics 
to run into some difficulties that cannot be solved at pres- 
ent. This is in fact a good method of awakening a begin- 
ning interest in later and larger studies. 

The instructor may be helpful to children at times by 
refreshing their minds and by suggesting famihar experi- 
ences that will apply to the difficulty at hand. 
anT^Sfng^ The Cement work which children have seen done 
past ex- jj^ bridsre abutments or in concrete foundations 

penences ° 

may be just the thing needed in interpreting the 
cement work on the dam. It may be advisable to visit 
some local shop or piece of constructive work to secure 
the data necessary to interpret the Roosevelt Project. 
Sometimes it is profitable to make a map or diagram on 
the blackboard and discuss it fully in class in order to clear 
up a difficult part of the construction. Such was the 
case in one class in trying to explain the high-line ditch 
or canal that was dug twenty miles long to supply a water 
power for the construction of the dam. One of the best 
things any teacher can do is to compel children to use 
their former experience or knowledge in interpreting new 
topics. Oftentimes they are surprisingly apt in the 
use of such personal experiences. Let the children 
also be free to use the blackboard as a means of ex- 
plaining and expressing their own ideas and interpreta- 
tions of the subject. As a result of the teacher's ex- 
ample, they quickly and easily fall into this excellent 
habit. Give a boy or girl who desires it a chance to 
make a full, unhindered explanation of a difficult point. 
Be not overhasty in condemning a child's interpreta- 
tion. Give him a fair hearing and correct his mistake 
and go on. 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVER PROJECT 23 1 

The problems involved in these large projects are more 
interesting and stimulating to the minds of children than the 
problems of arithmetic, because they are clearly 
objective and practical and lie directly in the ^y^'^^jgmg 
essential line of thought. They are the neces- better than 
sary steps for reaching conclusions that we are arithmetic 
after. They are more practical than arithmetic 
because they are not so exact and easily determinable. 
There are more contingencies and uncertainties, just such 
as we meet in the difficulties of daily life. Unexpected 
emergencies, such as sudden floods and accidents to ma- 
chinery, arise, or the rock foundation is insecure and must 
be reenforced, or a cave-in occurs which demands special, 
inventive readjustment. This kind of thinking puts 
children into the real struggle of life and no wonder it 
engages their full powers. There is no uncommon or 
excessive difficulty in thinking out such problems, if only 
we furnish enough concrete data, the real conditions and 
facts. Here again the teacher needs knowledge and 
plenty of it and this is a very serious difficulty. The 
dynamic thought-movement through a series of problems 
toward a fought-for goal is the essential thing, the motivated 
energy. 

The second stage of comparisons, of combined aggressive 
and reflective thinking, rests back upon the first stage as 
a necessary foundation. We cannot make 
comparisons that amount to anything without a "^^^ ^^* ®* 

^ JO measure 

well-established, clearly defined unit of measure must be 
upon which to base the comparison. It is non- defined 
sense to talk of comparing irrigation projects and 
of developing a comprehensive view of government and 
of private irrigation until we have a clear and full concep- 



232 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

tion of at least one great project. The big, well-developed 
object lessofij which for all the future stands out as a standard 
unit of comparison, is the first inevitable need of the child 
if he is to be held to real thinking. On this basis of a real, 
tangible unit of measure, he can do the thinking just as 
well as you or I, and without this basis the teacher himself 
can do no real thinking and is thrown back upon empty, 
hypocritical phrases. 

How do we know that children in intermediate and 
grammar grades can do this kind of progressive thinking? 

First, because we have traveled over this road 
why chii- with children and have seen others traveling 
m^^^ the same route, and secondly, because it is, in 

its nature, a much easier road to travel with 
children than the abstract road usually taken. Thinking 
on the basis of large, concrete object lessons as standards 
of measure is natural and easy. It is the effort and pretense 
of doing real thinking without this basis which makes study 
dull and hard and essentially discouraging. Be it remem- 
bered that we are dealing with the selfsame topics in com- 
mon use in our textbooks. The main difference is that 
we are making these very topics richly intelligible to 
children. 

A third reason for crediting the children with this ability 
to think in larger terms is that this big object lesson puts 
into children's hands an instrument of thought with which 
they love to operate. It is a discovered talent which they 
can put to service. Like the parable of the talent, it is a 
treasure not to be hidden in the ground. One of the big 
things we can do for a child is to put him in possession of 
one of these ideas in the form of a great object lesson and 
then allow him to test it out here and there on new situa- 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT KIVER PROJECT 233 

tions, and test it again and again until he grows into a habit 
of applying his knowledge. For the world is all the while 
opening up new avenues through which these same ideas 
operate. 

Having discussed these more fundamental questions of 
classroom method, we turn now to a few important points 
with which the practical schoolmaster must always deal : 

1. In the assignment of a lesson in the book or in a 
study pamphlet, the children should be held firmly to the 
mastery and reproduction of the work assigned. 

It is presupposed that the assignment has been ^^^l^\ 
reasonable and clearly stated. In the follow- mastery of 
ing class discussions, also, we should penetrate ^g^ed " 
deeply into the subject and demand clear and 
complete imaging. We set up here the same standards of 
clear thinking for children which we have previously em- 
phasized for teachers. Careless and slipshod statements 
and loose thinking are not to be endured. There should 
be a kindly but firm insistence upon high standards. 

2. In this connection and as an offset to any undue 
severity, freedom of expression should be allowed children. 
Freedom to draw and sketch and diagram at ^^^^^^ ^ 
the blackboard have been mentioned already, freedom of 
They should also be allowed freedom and ®^p^®®^*°** 
originality of speech. Let them cultivate a picturesque 
and figurative and descriptive style in speaking. Children 
are young and imaginative and extravagant in speech 
and these big object lessons call for much freedom and 
originaHty of constructive imagination. [Big projects in 
geography, big conceptions and inventions in science, 
and big historic movements are much like literature in 
their demand upon invention and imaginative picturing. 



234 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

Sharp, vigorous, picturesque language, striking phrases, 
and apt and even amusing descriptions are especially appro- 
priate. Give children great freedom in this respect. 

3. Some prompt drill exercises can be thrown in nearly 
every day. These large topics, such as the Roosevelt 
Driu upon Project, develop into important series of irriga- 
series ^[q^ projects, of rivers, or of mountains. These 
should be fixed in memory by drills, sometimes oral, some- 
times written. A single important idea underHes such a 
series and the drill emphasizes and gives importance to 
this idea. As a big topic develops through comparisons, 
a chain of important cities or of physiographic regions 
or of industrial enterprises develops into a national or 
world significance, and this natural sequence of headings 
is worth fixing in mind. 

4. A big topic is a natural rendezvous for the collection 
of pictures, maps, and reference materials. These should 
Making col- ^^^ be piled up in a confused mass, but sifted 
lections g^j^^j arranged, and their value as contributions to 
the main topic clearly brought out. Children who have 
the time and abiHty may be appointed to report on some 
of the reference topics, and should be held to a clear and 
adequate statement of such a contribution. The collec- 
tion, the orderly grouping of such interesting and helpful 
material around the main topic has important merits. 
It sets the children to work in definite efforts of their own 
to enlarge and enrich the subject. It breaks up the 
monotony of mere textbook and classroom work. It is 
the beginning of a habit of collecting and organizing knowl- 
edge materials around important thought centers, a habit 
of great value for a lifetime. It even leads sometimes 
to original constructive efforts to devise machines, or sand 



METHOD ILLUSTRATED BY THE SALT RIVER PROJECT 235 

maps, or models for the more definite illustration of impor- 
tant ideas. It socializes class work by mutually helpful 
contributions. 

5. A copiously developing topic like irrigation, which 
opens out widely into geographical and historical fields, 
offers a number of excellent themes for composi- 
tion. Being so fruitful in knowledge, it sup- Suitable 

. , themes for 

plies the first essential requirement, — a meaty composition 
subject to deal with, deserving a worthy treatment. 
Such themes as the following are easily suggested : 

1. The future of irrigation in the United States. 

2. How to secure greater economies in the use of irri- 
gation water. 

3. Ancient systems of irrigation in Egypt and China. 

4. Possibilities for irrigation in the Sahara and the great 
deserts of Asia. 

5. The extension of irrigation in regions of natural rain- 
fall. 

6. The superiority of irrigation as a method of agricul- 
ture. 

7. Law-making and water rights and the relation of 
irrigation to state governments and to the national govern- 
ment. 

8. Irrigation by wells and pumping. 

9. The importance of water powers connected with 
irrigation projects. 

Good reference materials are available for the study 
and treatment of such topics. A list of such references 
is given on p. 215. 

In preparing and writing on these topics children should 
be encouraged into freedom and independence in the or- 
ganization and handling of the subjects. 



236 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

It is not the least of the values of these big, richly develop- 
ing units of study that they open up such profitable source 
materials for original composition. 

6. Before ending and laying aside such a topic as irri- 
gation, a final review — test or examination — may profit- 
A final re- ^bly be given to the children. Such a test has 
view test marked advantages both for the teacher and 
children. It might be well, when possible, for the principal 
or some other qualified teacher to give this test. It would 
be equally valuable to the principal by bringing him into 
definite relation to the work being done in the school. 
The regular teacher would have his eyes opened to the weak 
and strong points in his own teaching. In subjects which 
children have gone into with zeal and with real effort they 
will thoroughly enjoy this opportunity to give an account 
of their proficiency in mastering a large and interesting 
subject. It is a great opportunity indeed to witness the 
richness of thought and superior language power gained 
by children. 

Two points should be kept clearly in mind : 2 . 

1. The basal organization of the knowledge material 
requiring sound thought and right sequence. 

2. Clearness and accuracy in regard to facts and entire 
situations, i.e. complete imagery. 

Such a test gives completeness to the whole undertaking 
as a worthy and responsible achievement. 



CHAPTER XIII 

CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 

We wish now to go deeper into matters of classroom 
method. The first question is: How are children to 
come into contact with the knowledge materials in these 
big projects ? Or putting it in another way : How does 
knowledge of this sort best unfold itself to children's active 
minds ? We will presuppose that we have a well-organized 
unit of study suitable to the needs and capacity of the 
children. 

One way provides that the teacher present the whole 
subject by word of mouth, in the best fashion at his com- 
mand. Another way is for the child to read it from a book 
and appropriate it the best way he can. In either case 
the whole subject may be reproduced later and discussed 
in the class. Or these two ways may be combined. The 
teacher may introduce the subject, open up the field of 
thought, and arouse the interest of the children in one or 
more initial problems. He then assigns a lesson in the 
book and calls attention perhaps to one or two problems 
or difficulties that will arise. At the next lesson, the whole 
matter is reproduced and discussed in the class. 

These are sometimes called the lecture method and 
the textbook method, and some critics object to both 
as modes of appropriating knowledge. And yet, in the 
hands of good teachers, these plans produce excellent 
results. This conclusion is based on the condition that 

237 



238 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

teachers are careful in the assignment of lessons and have 
some skill and judgment in discussing lessons recited by 
the children. 

With respect to the lecture method, it may be said that 
the teacher of children should not be a mere lecturer 
in the usual sense of that term ; and yet it may frequently 
happen that the instructor should be prepared to give the 
children a clpr, strong, and full presentation of a topic, 
and every teacher should cultivate this power of simple, 
masterly narration and description. This kind of ability 
denotes complete control of the subject in hand and re- 
sourcefulness in presenting it to children. 

Again, as to children learning lessons from books, they 
should from time to time be held to a high standard of 
proficiency in mastering and reproducing the substance of 
important subjects studied from books. Such proficiency 
requires serious, prolonged, and profitable effort on the 
part of children. It should not be formal and slavish, but 
free and thoughtful, and should be interspersed with ques- 
tions and discussions which bring out rational freedom and 
independence in thought. 

There are four phases of classroom instruction which - 
^ ^ we wish to keep clearly in mind in the further 

Four phases ^ ^ ^ -^ , 

ofinstruc- discussion of the large units of study. They 
may be briefly summarized as follows : 

First, the Art of Questioning, Questions are used in a 
variety of ways and it must be admitted that the question 
is the most frequent and important instrument used in 
teaching. (See preceding chapter.) 

Secondly, Problem-solving, in which children are given 
a chance to use their own original powers in discovering, 
thinking out, and interpreting difficult situations. 



CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 239 

Thirdly, The Development Method of teaching, by which 
children, by means of question and discussion, are thrown 
much upon their own resources in the acquisition of knowl- 
edge. 

Fourthly, Reviews and Drills, by means of which teachers 
aim to secure greater thoroughness and retentiveness of 
knowledge. 

It is not our purpose to enter upon a full and separate 
discussion of each of these already familiar points, but 
rather to observe how they relate themselves to the thought 
movements and processes which belong to large units of 
study. 

As seen in an earlier chapter, the big unit of study offers 
a dynamic thought-movement. It contains within it a 
growing, expanding idea which organizes the 
facts and carries them through a developing pro- namic 
cess. At the basis of this process is the inductive- thought- 

, , . 1 • 1 1 .1 . movement is 

deductive movement which determines the mam a broad 
line of progress from the particular to the general ^l^l^ 
in learning. This complete, progressive cycle of 
thought in a big topic is a broad and safe foundation for 
lesson planning and for method in classroom work. Every 
large unit of study is a complete thought enterprise or 
project as shown in treating the Panama Canal or in the 
reconstruction of Vienna. It has one central, purposive 
idea which works out its full meaning and value to the 
world in a unit of effort. 

We can well afford to put before children these strong 
study-units, with their copious thought materials, just 
to see how their spirits will respond to such bait. Too 
much we have been giving them a meager and tasteless 
diet and then have complained and criticized them because 



240 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

they do not think or show a thirst for knowledge. This 
appetite for knowledge is what the intensive and enriching 
study of profitable topics will bring and bring with cer- 
tainty if the teacher shows a reasonable mastery and skill. 
Nor is it the purpose to pour out this copious fund 
of knowledge as dictated material, imposed by the teacher 

upon the docile minds of children. When once 
Not pure initiated into this forward movement and awak- 
anddic- encd to its wealth of knowledge, we are ready 
thmfht ^^ ^P^^ ^P problems and to enter into free dis- 
but sharp cussions as to the relations of the facts and forces 
anrserious we are studying. For we have the information, 
problems ^^g background of facts, the conditioning cir- 
pounded cumstances, upon which, as a sound basis, a 

solution of problems can be worked out. When, 
for example, we study the conditions at the mouth of the 
Mississippi River under which Captain Eads attacked the 
problem of the jetties and hoped to open a deep passage 
for large ships through the mud-bars to the Gulf and thus 
make New Orleans a great port, we furnish children with 
material or see that they get it with which to do their own 
thinking. They seize that opportunity eagerly, and push 
on to important and correct conclusions. 

It is under such conditions also that we as teachers 
can learn to frame good questions bearing on these prob- 
lems. For example. How can the jetties be built to nar- 
row the current? What material can be obtained and 
used for the construction of the jetties? How can the 
current of the water be turned more swiftly into this nar- 
row channel when once formed? When abundant knowl- 
edge is at hand and focused on a progressive enterprise, 
questions may be asked that will give children a chance 



CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 241 

to do most of the thinking. In our present teaching of 
subjects we have not time to put before children the full 
information upon which they can base their thinking, and 
we are actually dictating both the facts and the con- 
clusions. The whole matter is briefly summarized and 
the children are required to appropriate it by a sheer act 
of memory. 

The question is one of the teacher's most important 
instruments in developing and testing knowledge, but 
there is enormous waste and confusion as the 
result of loose and unpremeditated questioning, prfv^n^^ 
Questions need to be framed in relation to a de- '^*^*® *". 

. . , - . , . , questioning 

velopmg hne of thought, m which a clearly seen 
goal is set up and knowledge materials are assembled and 
brought to bear upon that goal. The big, well-organized 
unit of study clearly satisfies the two main conditions for 
good questioning, (i) an abundance of pertinent knowl- 
edge, (2) a forward effort on the basis of this knowledge 
toward a clearly-seen goal, in short, a purposeful thought 
movement. 

The teacher should keep his mind centered upon the 
main idea as it grows, and the chief questions will point 
toward this developing thought. This presupposes in 
the mind of the teacher a definite organization of knowl- 
edge. Only those questions are admitted which clearly 
point out the main steps in this forward-moving thought. 
On any other basis it is difficult to see how we can avoid 
great waste in questioning. 

The main idea in a big unit works itself out through a i^ 
series of difficulties. (See Chapter XII.) In the Lewis 
and Clark expedition across the western mountains, the 
explorers are compelled to meet a succession of hardships 



242 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

which stand out as real and knotty problems against which 
they pitted their ingenuity and their physical endurance. 
All important human enterprises have this 
study S^ ^ problem-setting character, and our big units of 
developing study are reproductions of these typical experi- 

senes of -^ ^ ^ r ir 

problems, ences. The method of teaching such large sub- 
bedded^Si" J^^^^ ^^ ^ method of solving problems. The 
life situa- teacher must introduce these tasking situations 
with sufficient elaboration of the facts to qualify 
the children for thinking out a solution in each case. This 
shows why it is necessary to go somewhat fully into details. 
Otherwise the children have not the data upon which to 
base their reasoning. These data may sometimes be found 
in the previous knowledge of the children and can be 
drawn out by questions. At other times the facts must be 
presented directly by the teacher or obtained from text- 
books and references. In any case fullness of knowledge 
is the only basis for sound thinking in the effort to solve 
problems. Questioning, in the absence of such knowledge, 
is a waste of time and is a not uncommon form of futile, 
disappointing mental effort. 

The large units of study are conspicuous for the fullness 
and elaborate presentation of the descriptive facts and cir- 
cumstances which environ these problems. Big projects 
grow and develop out of such abundant accumulations of 
interesting knowledge materials. The thought develops and 
expands to large proportions because it has the thought- 
building stuff upon which to grow. Our present studies 
and classroom methods suffer sadly and inevitably because 
of the serious dearth of this vivifying circumstantiality of 
knowledge, this strong supporting background of facts. 
Even a good teacher is often completely handicapped by 



CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 243 

this serious deficiency. The ordinary principles of teaching 
and the devices of method are helpless in the presence of 
this desert condition, this shortage of detailed knowledge. 
Our textbooks, except readings in good literature, have 
accustomed us to this lean and meager diet, but if real 
problems are to have any significance in our methods of 
instruction, a far richer accumulation of vitalizing knowl- 
edge must be collected along the developing course of every 
big unit of study. The mind, like a steam engine, requires 
a large amount of fuel. At present we are entirely too 
stingy with our deeper and richer knowledge resources. 
They are within our reach, if we will take the pains to col- 
lect and organize them. But our textbooks, under a seem- 
ing compulsion to spread out over a vast field, have stripped 
away most of this rich environment of thought and the 
teachers and children are left to travel along the barren 
ridges of a desert country. 

In the first place, the course of study needs to be modi- 
fied so as to make it possible to deal adequately with these 
big topics, and, secondly, well-trained experts who have 
plenty of time and abundant resources of knowledge 
should be asked to work out a satisfactory, elaborate 
treatment of these big units of study which can then be 
dehvered into the hands of teachers and even of children. 
In other words, if teachers are to lead children into prob- 
lem-solving modes of study, it is not well at the start and 
as a preUminary to lay upon the teacher an impossible 
burden of collecting and organizing material, but rather 
to see that he is well supplied with the equipment which 
is necessary for his success. 

Presupposing such big, problem-solving projects in proper 
elaboration, the question of method at this point is how 



244 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

to handle these problems. As to the teacher, the first duty 
is to find the central difl&culty in each problem, and to 
„ ^, . know the definite facts that bear upon it — the 

Problems m .... 

their com- whole background. This implies a superior 
p etc setting q^g^J|^y ^f scholarship which is full and clear and 

practical. For example, in building the Roosevelt Dam for 
irrigation in the Salt River Valley, it was first necessary 
to decide upon the location of the dam with reference to 
forming a lake reservoir between the upper mountain 
sources of water on the one side, and the level lands in 
the lower valley on the other. Taking these and other 
important facts into consideration, where should the dam 
be located? With this pivotal question in mind and with 
a full knowledge of the conditioning facts, the teacher is 
ready to formulate other questions which will set the chil- 
dren to thinking. What are two or three most important 
matters to be considered in locating the dam? Where 
could it be most easily built? Where would they get the 
materials and supplies needed? To answer these ques- 
tions it is advisable to have a full supply of pertinent and 
available information, and the teacher must first have it 
herself and then see to it that the children get possession 
of these facts, by studying maps or by reading and refer- 
ences or by the direct presentation on the teacher's part. 
A simple fact furnished by the teacher may sometimes 
give the children much to think about. For example, 
about forty miles up the river, above the lands to be irri- 
gated, is a narrow, deep gorge in the course of the river. 
What of it? 

It is worth noting that at every step, even in minor 
details of such a subject, the children meet problems, 
because a project like this is worked out by a constant 



CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 245 

adjustment of means to ends in executing a larger whole, 
a complete undertaking. 

Nor is it advisable to work out all these problems by 
question and answer, that is, by a development method. 
It would require too much time. Often a com- 
plete and interesting narrative or description i>eveiop- 

f *^ , ^ ment ques- 

is the better manner of getting facts and situa- tioning may 
tions before the children. Here and there a overdone 
question thrown in at a critical point will give 
the children their opportunity to help on the progress of 
thought, to solve problems. For example, — How is the 
water from the lake reservoir to be brought down the valley 
forty miles to the point where the flat lands lie which are 
to be irrigated? They should be encouraged to ask ques- 
tions or to raise objections, while their ideas and opinions 
should be respected, even when they go astray. Even 
their mistakes give a favorable opportunity for impressing 
the truth by contrast. Absurd answers are sometimes 
given by children. Let the facts correct these absurdities. 
We may even go to the extreme of saying that the teacher 
should cultivate the power of vivid presentation of topics, 
of clear and simple exposition. He should 

The tes.clier 

develop in a variety of ways graphic power and should cui- 
illustrative resource. In aptness and force of *^^*.*?* 

^ positive 

language, he should increase more and more, and skill in oral ■ 
in using chalk at the blackboard for diagrams and ^^®^®^ *^°° 
drawings and maps, he should acquire that ease and 
versatility which betoken habit. In this direction the 
teacher grows into a professional expert; he possesses 
distinctive abilities or qualifications peculiar to his office. 
He should become not only a master of devices but a dis- 
coverer and inventor of devices. This ideal is actually 



246 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

reached in large measure by those who put themselves to 
the task, and it is a highly honorable achievement. It 
should not encroach upon the self-activity and independent 
thinking power of children, but lead up to and encourage 
self-reHance on their part. 

For it is a great achievement to develop power of thought 
and expression in children, to lead them into these reflec- 
tive processes, to let them struggle with knowl- 
seif-active edge materials, and work out clearly important 
*hii2^n^"° a ^^^^^^^ which they express in adequate terms of 
great language. The large units of study, with their 

achievement . • .• j • t_« ^.i. 1.1. 

progressive organization and enriching thought 
materials, furnish the teacher the instruments with which 
to work out this result. When the children are well 
launched into one of these campaigns of study, their mental 
activities are awakened, their minds begin to fill up with 
ideas and with projects, and they are able to talk about and 
discuss problems in an almost masterful way. At least, 
one is often surprised by their power of thought and full- 
ness and accuracy of speech. This never happens with 
poor and feeble knowledge, nor with mere conventional, 
textbook phraseologies. There must be a strong back- 
ground of well-appreciated, organizing knowledge before 
this result is achieved. 

The teacher must know how to keep himself in the 
background, to unload the burden of thought and expres- 
sion from himself upon the children, to guide the 
thebur^den process of thought skillfully by an occasional sug- 
of effort to gestion or criticism, but to remain to a large ex- 

the children ^ 

tent a silent spectator. The child should learn 
to do things on his own responsibility. He is to under- 
stand that he does not know a thing till he can give a full 



CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 247 / 

account of it from his own point of view, and from his 
own feehng of mastery. Let the teacher keep his hands 
off and let the child struggle with his own problem. Surely 
this is true in the final windup of any important discussion, 
in testing results after the full treatment of any larger 
subject. Our argument at this stage brings us to the point 
where thoroughness in the mastery of knowledge is of such 
importance that it calls for a system of careful tests. 

Constructive Thoroughness 

The general plan of working out and organizing the 
large unit of study provides at several points for a con- 
structive thoroughness, that is, a thoroughness 
that is built up, steadily, by the natural growth Thorough- 
and interconnection of thought as the subject on^growtr 
unfolds. There is a prevalent opinion among andorgani- , 

^ . zation in 

teachers that thoroughness rests mamly upon knowledge 
repetitions and rigid drills. But thoroughness j 

of the better type is that which rests first upon complete i 
understanding of the thing to be learned. To see a thing 
clearly in its beginnings, growth, and essential relations, 
to comprehend it in its bearings on life and reality, to get 
an experimental, usable knowledge of a thing is to know 
it thoroughly. The thoroughness of knowledge that 
makes it efficient in use is what we want. There is a 
fictitious, rather pretentious, kind of thoroughness, based 
upon verbal drills and oft-repeated reviews, which has a 
strong resemblance to knowledge. But the best kind of 
knowledge is that which takes deep root and Hke a young 
plant soon acquires powers of independent assimilation 
and growth. In the large unit of study this growing 
energy, as a strong factor, is provided for in two ways. 



248 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

First, in order to give the central idea in a large study- 
unit a chance to germinate, that is, to exhibit its Hfe prin- 
ciple, a strong, active demonstration of this idea, 
under wWch 2-s a positive, active force in the world, is effec- 
anidea tivelv presented. Much pains is taken to un- 

germinates , 

cover the strength of this idea and to let it mani- 
fest itself concretely in its full setting and influence. This 
explains why such elaborate efforts are made to gather 
descriptive data and to enrich and intensify the interesting, 
graphic details which environ the central thought. This 
point has been fully discussed and illustrated in previous 
chapters. 

The second step which provides for a solid and permanent 
structure of knowledge is the growth and expansion of 

the idea through a study and comparison of 
andor-^*^^ Other real situations in which the same idea is 
ganizing operative. We must make sure of the scope of jl 

an idea, its power and influence in the world 
beyond this single example. 

The growing stage in the large unit introduces a full 
series of these additional embodiments of the idea for 
serious examination and for comparison with the original. 
Ideas have to find a deep, rich soil in which to expand. 
They refuse to thrive in a thin, poor, or desert environment. | 
It requires much time to collect sufficient variety of illus- 
trative experience upon which to grow a strong and master- 
ful idea. A purposive idea does not begin to show its 
larger influence till we have introduced a variety of impor- 
tant situations in which it reveals its dominant force. 
Textbooks are meager and almost valueless in this great 
effort to demonstrate the expansive power of ideas in a 
broader field. They either forget or underestimate the 



CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 249 

value of this procedure or they leave it wholly to the teacher, 
who neglects it or has not time to provide for it. But 
when ideas fail to grow and expand, education in this 
direction comes to a standstill. We may try to make up 
for this by strenuous reviews and drills, but the foundation 
01 ^und knowledge is lacking and mere reviews and repeti- 
tions cannot compensate for the lack of vital knowledge. 
A considerable number of complete illustrations of this 
second important stage in the growth of ideas has been set 
forth in the preceding chapters. 

In summing up we may note that the elaborate treatment 
of a big study-unit through its two main stages is a pledge 

that ideas first of all have taken deep root in good, 

. - Summsxy 

rich soil ; and, secondly, that they have contmued 
to grow and mature under favorable culture till they have 
reached a full fruitage. This we are disposed to affirm 
as the necessary basis for all thoroughness in knowledge. 

Apperceptive Use of Knowledge (See Chapter V) 

In connection with these two main stages in the sound 
growth of knowledge there are two other phases of the 
process of thought which require special em- 

, . -r 1 . 1 • . Discovering 

pnasis. In approacmng any new subject or ©id ideas 
large unit, children should be summoned by a i^^^Y 

*^ ' , , "^ situations 

constant appeal to their previous experience. 
The course of study is laid out with the explicit intention 
of making earlier topics contribute important data for the 
interpretation of later subjects of study. In short, our 
course of study should be dominated by important ideas 
which keep reappearing as fundamental types, and these 
have great capacity for interpreting new but similar situa- 
tions. Children, then, should be held to a constant use 



250 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

of their old ideas, or to a perpetual process of discovering 
old ideas in new situations. The habit of rediscovering 
ideas is one to be steadily cultivated both by teachers and 
children. It is an emphasis of the apperceptive use of 
knowledge. To state this principle in this form is simply 
to show where a serious difficulty lies. For it is one of the 
chief difficulties in class instruction to put this principle 
into frequent and steady use. New things, or those which 
seem to be new and strange, are usually hard to master. 
Children in school are ever coming up against just such new 
situations, and the skill of the teacher is tried to the limit at 
this crucial point. A new difficulty can usually be solved in 
one of two ways. If it is a lesson that involves a really new 
idea, it is necessary to introduce a full, concrete illustration, 
for example, a boomerang, or a catamaran. If, however, the 
new lesson contains an old principle in a new and strange 
form or dress, it can usually be explained by recalling the 
kindred idea or example and by discovering a similarity. 

The importance of the large type study is that it not 

only embodies an important idea in a typical object, and thus 

becomes the basis for the full development of a 

The far- broad unit of study, but that it may be the first of 

reaching^ ^ / ^ . "^ j 1 

interpreta- an important series of type studies, based on the 
steor^^nres same idea, and extending more or less contin- 
uously through the whole length of the curricu- i 
lum. In fact it expands and reaches into later life and 
becomes a center around which to group and interpret 
similar experiences in later life. The first full demonstra- 
tion of an important type becomes thus a basis later for 
a rapid and effective interpretation of many so-called new 
and difficult lessons. When we add this consideration, 
that the basal types or ideas are few in number, that a few 



CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 25 1 

fundamental ideas extending through the curriculum make 
the main framework upon which the whole course is built, 
we begin to realize the far-reaching, interpretative power of 
these few leading ideas, and also the simplicity of the course 
of study as a whole. The processes of instruction should 
be bent to the thorough working out of these main ideas in 
a continuous stream. But teachers often overlook this. 

As instruction advances from grade to grade the cen- 
tral ideas become well developed and progress should be 
more rapid because the new situations can be 
interpreted quickly on the basis of previous T^eJ^ten- 

tr ~i J r- Sjyg study 

studies. (See Chapter V.) This line of thought of a smau 
suggests the value of a very intensive study of bas!3* ideas 
a small number of fundamental projects in each 
school subject and a systematic use and application of 
these as interpreters and as a means of rapid progress 
through effective organization of studies. Our present 
short and scrappy treatment of important units of study 
fails to bring the main ideas into such a clear light, such a 
full demonstration, that they will in the future possess 
keen, interpretative power. Ideas do not become strong 
factors in the interpretation of new knowledge until they 
have acquired a certain dominant energy, until they 
have become rooted in one's progressive habits of thought, 
so that later incoming experience and knowledge are drawn 
in and absorbed by these stronger habits and preconcep- 
tions. It pays, therefore, to abide long enough with some 
central unit of thought so that its controlling idea may 
become a live center for future organizations. It becomes 
especially keen and strong in its power to interpret all 
similar situations where the same fundamental idea pre- 
vails — e.g, a thorough understanding of our Federal Gov- 



252 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

eminent in its structure and functions will throw a quick 
and strong light upon all free governments and even upon 
other arbitrary governments by contrast. 

The second important means of securing thoroughness is 
that of review by comparison. In several important studies, 
Review by ^s in history, literature, science, and geography, 
companson systematic comparison of earlier with later 
studies is productive of reflective thinking, of rapid as- 
similation of knowledge, and of close organization upon 
central themes. (See Chapters V and XII.) 

One common reason for not making comparisons is that 
comparison requires special fullness and definiteness of 
knowledge. Our information on important subjects has 
been too meager to form a basis for thoughtful comparisons 
by which we may discover striking similarities and contrasts. 
The Missouri River, for example, is more than twice as 
long as the Ohio, but carries only half as much water into 
the Mississippi River as the Ohio. The causes and results 
of this wide difference are deserving of thoughtful study. 
The Rhine is more than three times as long as the Hudson 
and yet commercially the Hudson is fully as important 
as the Rhine. Why? This kind of information is not 
furnished by the books and such problems cannot be dis- 
cussed till fuller information is at hand. 

Our large units of study are elaborated with such descrip- 
tive fullness and their fundamental values are so 
units be- clearly measured and defined that they become 
come our definite standards of value. We later return 

standard 

measures to them again and again as measuring units. 

edS^°^^" '^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ continuous comparisons of these 

with similar and with dissimilar objects of 

thought bring them into new lights and to greater clearness. 



CLASSROOM METHOD BASED ON PROJECTS 253 

By these perpetual comparisons, on the basis of a few 
Standards of thought, our chief concepts are thoroughly 
worked over, organized, and mastered. 

This regular and reflective use of comparisons in the 
second stage of big units of study would not only collect 
and organize our resources upon developing centers of 
thought, but it would almost put an end to our memoriter 
and static reviews, which at present form so large a part 
of the dulling routine of school study. 

Reviews by comparison are highly stimulating to inde- 
pendent thought and they build up that steady organiza- 
tion of knowledge and that continuity of thought from 
year to year which is not only the best proof of thorough- 
ness, but is a sure indication of the power to use knowledge 
and apply it to new situations. The type studies, by 
continually resurrecting the older fundamental ideas in 
study, furnish opportunity in every important topic for 
systematic review by comparison. In this way growth 
in knowledge becomes an assimilating, organizing process. 
The important ideas come to frequent review and what is 
learned is built into the organic mental structure so as to 
hold its place securely. Memory is based, not mainly I 
upon repetition and drill, but upon vital association and I 
upon strong and permanent growth in thought. 

The main distinction between the conventional idea 
of review and drill and the view here presented is the dif- 
ference between the static and the dynamic con- 

The sta.tic 

ception of learning. In our view the learning and the 
process is a perpetual forward-moving, assimilat- ^ynamxc 
ing growth. The older and prevailing view is 
that knowledge is a static accumulation, that can be tested 
and measured by examinations. While there is a static 



254 TEACHING BY PROJECTS 

element in knowledge, it needs to be kept flexible, or 
better still, growing and always reorganizing its elements. 
The Mississippi River, for example, is not so much an object 
as a process in nature, an exhibition of nature's forces 
operating on a gigantic scale. In order to understand the 
Mississippi River we must allow our minds to swing into 
the great current of action displayed by the river itself. 
Men have studied this river in its work and have learned 
to modify and direct its energy to a considerable extent. 
Captain Eads, by building the jetties, caused the current 
of the river to clear out and deepen its own channel so that 
large vessels could pass the delta bar. A careful study of 
this river in its physiographic and climatic conditions, in 
its developing hfe history, and in its regular and periodic 
mode of action is a sound basis for a complete understand- 
ing of the forces at work in a great river system. It is 
highly remunerative to spend many hours in camping 
along this great stream, in examining the work of its widely 
different tributaries, in marking its floods and man's efforts 
to curb them, in observing its navigable uses and water 
powers. We shall learn many important lessons that 
will give us a quick interpretation of other rivers so long as 
we continue our study of geography. Especially is this 
true if we will take time for thoughtful comparisons. In 
the elaborate study of the Mississippi we have a sound 
basis for organization of knowledge concerning all rivers, 
in a developing course. We fail to get this surprising benefit 
because we neglect to devote our time to an intensive, real- 
istic study of a few big, donciinant types. Having forfeited 
this first great advantage, of course we cannot use such 
types as centers of organization for the later studies. We 
are simply thrown back upon a memoriter drill. 



INDEX 



Abortive knowledge, 91 
Achievement, a large unit of, 176 
Agencies engaged in irrigation, 208 
Amount of land irrigated in U. S., 216 
Analogies on the nature of knowledge, 126 
Apperception, 87; interpretations based 
on, 224; use of past experiences, 
230; apperceptive use of knowledge, 

249 
Assimilation and use of knowledge, 80 
Assuan Dam on the Nile, 204 

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 118 
Big unit of study, 16 
Biographical stories as large units, 68 
Business-world pedagogy, 82 

California, trip to, 29 

Capitol, 25 

Centers for organizing facts, 122 

Chaotic knowledge, 123 

Chicago Drainage Canal, 119 

Children can think, 232 

Children held to a mastery of large 

topics, 233 
Children take the burden of effort, 246 
Chinese canals and irrigation, 213 
Collections made by children, 234 
Committee of Eight on History, 100 
Comparison based on definite imit of 

measure, 231 
Completed imit of study a beginning, 130 
Composition themes in large projects, 235 
Concepts as a starting point, 62; dull 

tools, 65 
Concrete, the, 64 
Confusion in studies, 121 
Conservative tendencies, 144 
Constructive thoroughness, 247 
Continuity of thought, 89 
Correlations are natural in large types, 

227 



Deeper thinking by children in large 
projects, 228 

Demonstration farm for irrigation, 202 

Development method, 239; easily over- 
done, 24s 

De Witt Clinton, no 

Diversion Dam, 196 

Dogmatic process, 94 

Drill based on the series developed by a 
large unit, 234 

Drills and reviews, 239 

Dynamic process in large units, 169 

Dynamic thought-movement a basis, for 
method, 239 

Economy of large lesson-planning, 151 
Egypt and irrigation, 210 
Elephant Butte Project, 203 
Enlarged object lesson, 74 
Enrichment of studies, 135 ; conclusions 

as to, ISO, 151 
Erie Canal, 98 

Facts growing into knowledge, 127 
False conception of knowledge, 129 
First stage in a large unit, 176 
Flexibility in thinking, 225 
Formal outlines criticized, 184 
Formalism, drift toward, 144 
Freedom of expression encouraged, 233 

Garden projects, 18; home garden, 19 
Great migration, 33 

History, beginning in general outlines, 68 
Hoosac Tvmnel, 118 

Ideas, conditions for germination of, 248 ; 

growing, 124; r\ile the world, 124 
India, irrigation in, 212 
Inductive-deductive processes, 135 
Intensive study of basal ideas, 251 



255 



256 



INDEX 



Intensive treatment of large units, 145 

Interest and effort, 94 

Intermediate grades and textbook teach- 
ing, 70 ; a plunge into big projects, 73 ; 
getting started right in middle grades, 
76; graphic methods in, 71; imique 
service of intermediate grades, 76 

Irrigation, method of, 196-197; futvire 
problems of, 214; references on, 215 

Keokuk Dam, 42 

Large unit, a developing series of prob- 
lems, 242 

Large units prevent cramping routine, 
185; favor freedom in teacher, 185; 
grow from year to year, 188; two 
stages in treatment, 219 

Learning as growth and organization, 128 

L'Enfant, 22 

Lesson planning, large, 152; large lesson 
planning neglected, 153; large unit 
considered first as a whole, 154 

Life centers, 16 

Life method and school method, 175 

Literary wholes as centers, 98 ; examples 
of such wholes, 147 

Literature, a general description, 67 

Main features of a central unit, 58 
Many-sidedness of big imits of study, 183 
Masterpieces of teaching in hterature, 99 
Mastery of the whole topic or unit, 219 
Method based on projects, 237 ; illus- 
trated by the Salt River Project, 216 
Mormon projects in irrigation, 204 
Muscle Shoals Project, 37 

Natural process in learning, 60 
New York Central Railroad, 116 

Object lessons outside the school, 78; 

for intermediate grades, 146 
Old National Road, 114 
Organization, basis for, 139 ; difficulty of, 

158 ; settles three important questions, 

160 ; strenuous effort required in, 161 ; 

a basis for method, 218 

Pacific Railroad, 35 
Panama Canal, 79, 119 
Pennsylvania canals, 107 
Portage railroad, 115 



Primary schools and objective teaching, 
70 

Problems, in a complete setting, 244; 
demanded, 170; life problems, 171; 
historic and economic, 172 ; the child's 
opportunity, 172 

Problem-projects, better than problems 
in arithmetic, 231 

Problem-solving, 238 

Projects as habits of society, 173; home 
projects, 6; history projects, 7, 14; 
industrial and commercial, 6; liter- 
ary, 9 ; meaning of, 10 ; shop projects, 
6; standard elements of, 13; self- 
activity and freedom, 93 •-t-**"*''-''"" '- 

Questions based on previous organiza- 
tion, 222; loss of time in questioning, 
223 

Questioning, art of, 238; waste in, 241 

Reclamation service, 190, 192 

Reflective thinking, 187 

Relations, vital, between studies, 182 

Religious teaching, beginning in concepts, 
66 

Reviews as means of organizing knowl- 
edge, 181 ; constructive organization, 
181 ; by comparison, 252 

Roosevelt Dam, 19s 

Salt River Project, 189 

San Francisco Exposition, 78 

School can improve on life, 174 

Science topics as large units, 148 

Second or reflective stage of study in 
large units, 179; growing and organiz- 
ing stage, 248 ^- 

Self -activity, 92 ; in children, 246 

Sensory basis of knowledge, 72 

Shoshone Project, 201 

SimpUcity of knowledge, 133 

Simplifying the course, 138 

Skeletonizing the thought studies, 142 

Skill in oral presentation, 245 

Snake River Projects, 200 

Standard measure or big imits, 252 

Static knowledge, 184 

Static and dynamic view of knowledge, 
253 

Taft, President, 27 

Teachers need help in organization, 159 ; 




INDEX 



257 



as leaders in larger thinking, 162 ; as 
leaders in organizing, 166; fail to 
image in reflective thought, 228; 
training on the basis of big units, 166 
Tendency to adopt large units, 102 
Tennessee River navigation, 41 
Terms used to express large imits, loi 
Test — final review, 236 
Textbook topics, 15 
Thought studies, 143 
Truckee-Carson Project, 205 
Twenty-nine irrigation projects, 206 
Twilight zone in the learning process, 63 
Twin Falls Project, 201 
Types and their value, 131 ; basal types, 
133 ; a chain of types and continuity, 
179; comparisons develop the type, 
226; interpretative use of types, 250 



Unanswerable questions, 229 

Units of construction in manual arts, 100 

Units of study, as illustrated for teachers, 
163; furnished by life itself, 174; 
large units a basis for instruction, 168; 
negatively defined, 46; positively 
defined, 50; sifting out units a diffi- 
cult work, 164; speciaUsts needed, 
165; summary of central units, 58; 
value to teachers of well-organized 
units, 158 

Universities and object lessons in agri- 
culture, 80 

Usable knowledge, 92 

Washington City, a project, 22 
Water power a substitute for coal, 42 
Welland Canal, 118 



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